INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION
OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS
OF THE
U.8. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
SEPTEMBER 27, 28, AND DECEMBER 29, 1978
VOLUME V
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Assassinations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
36^79 O WASHINGTON : 1979
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402
Stock Number 052-070-04907-3
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS
LOUIS STOKES, Ohio, Chairman
RICHARDSON PREYER, North Carolina
WALTER E. FAUNTROY,
District of Columbia
YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE,
California
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
HAROLD E. FORD, Tennessee
FLOYD J. FITHIAN, Indiana
ROBERT W. EDGAR, Pennsylvania
Subcommittee on the
Assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr.
WALTER E. FAUNTROY, Chairman
HAROLD E. FORD
FLOYD J. FITHIAN
ROBERT W. EDGAR
STEWART B. McKINNEY
LOUIS STOKES, ex officio
SAMUEL L. DEVINE, ex officio
SAMUEL L. DEVINE, Ohio
STEWART B. McKINNEY, Connecticut
CHARLES THONE, Nebraska
HAROLD S. SAWYER, Michigan
Subcommittee on the
Assassination of
John F. Kennedy
RICHARDSON PREYER, Chairman
YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD
CHARLES THONE
HAROLD S. SAWYER
LOUIS STOKES, ex officio
SAMUEL L. DEVINE, ex officio
(ID
CONTENTS
September 27, 1978:
Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director 1
Testimony of Lewis McWillie, Las Vegas, Nev 2
Narration by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director 240
Testimony of Jose Aleman 301
September 28, 1978:
Testimony of Santos TrafTicante 346
Testimony of Ralph Salerno 378
Testimony of Judge Burt W. Griffin 471
December 29, 1978:
Narration by Prof. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director 499
Testimony of:
Prof. Mark Weiss, presently of the Department of Computer Science of
Queens College of the City University of New York and Ernest
Aschkenasy, assistant to Prof. Mark Weiss 555
H. B. McLain, police officer, Dallas Police Department, Dallas, Tex 617
Afternoon Session
Narration by Prof. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director 641
Testimony of Dr. James Barger, chief scientist, and man in charge of
acoustical analysis at Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Inc 645
Final comments by Prof. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff
director 690
Closing remarks by Chairman Louis Stokes 697
(III)
INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1978
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on Assassinations,
Washington^ D,Q
The committee met at 9:35 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 345,
Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Richardson Preyer, presiding.
Present: Representatives Preyer, Stokes, Dodd, Fithian, Ford,
Edgar, Devine, and Sawyer.
Present also: G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel; G. Cornwell,
deputy chief counsel; D. Purdy, staff counsel; Elizabeth Berning,
chief clerk; I. Charles Mathews, special counsel; S. Jonathan
Blackner, staff counsel; Mr. J. McDonald, staff counsel; and
Howard Shapiro, attorney.
Mr. Preyer, The committee will come to order. The Chair recog-
nizes Mr. Blakey.
NARRATION BY G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF COUNSEL AND
STAFF DIRECTOR
Mr. Blakey. Thank you. Congressman Preyer.
During yesterday's hearings, the committee heard a report on a
computer survey of Jack Ruby's telephone calls in 1963. One con-
clusion that seemed to flow from it is that Jack Ruby must have
had reason to call a number of individuals who are reportedly
connected to the hierarchy of organized crime, the American
mafia. Since there is no way of being certain of the topic of the
conversation, what is known just from the fact of a phone call or
calls is itself not certain.
In some cases, we have the testimony of the persons called.
Generally they either don't remember being called by Ruby at all,
or it was about the AGVA, American Guild of Variety Artists,
dispute, or whatever.
In the committee's final report, the Ruby associates, that is,
those who have been identified by the telephone survey or by other
means as in some way connected to Jack Ruby will be examined in
detail. But to illustrate the investigative process the committee has
followed in this important area, one of Ruby's associates has been
selected for public examination at this hearing this morning. That
associate is Lewis J. McWillie who was in 1963, as he is today, a
Las Vegas casino employee.
The committee's investigation has shown that Mr. McWillie's
friendship with Jack Ruby goes back to the fifties, in Dallas. Since
( 1 )
2
that time, Mr. McWillie has worked in gambling casinos in
Havana, Cuba, as well as Las Vegas, Nev.
Mr. McWillie has entered under the rules of the committee a
specific request that there be no photographic coverage of his ap-
pearance and no electronic coverage. That means no one is to
photograph or keep lights on or use any tape recorder to record
Mr. McWillie's voice or face. Mr. Chairman, it would be appropri-
ate if an order be entered into that effect.
Mr. Preyer. Pursuant to rule 16 which reads in pertinent part, at
the request of any witness who does not wish to be subjected to
radio, television or still photography coverage, all lenses shall be
covered and all microphones used for coverage turned off.
At this time, the Chair directs that all lenses be covered and that
all microphones be turned off.
Mr. Blakey. It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman,
to call Lewis J. McWillie.
Mr. Preyer. The committee calls Lewis McWillie.
TESTIMONY OF LEWIS McWILLIE, LAS VEGAS, NEV.
Mr. Preyer. Will you stand and be sworn, Mr. McWillie. Do you
solemnly swear the evidence you are about to give in this hearing
will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so
help you God?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, sir.
Mr. Preyer. Mr. McWillie, pursuant to your request, all micro-
phones and lenses, broadcasting equipment, have been cut off.
The Chair recognizes counsel Donald Purdy for questioning of
this witness.
Mr. Purdy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McWillie, what is your full name and where do you live?
Mr. McWillie. Lewis J. McWillie.
Mr. Purdy. Where do you live?
Mr. McWillie Las Vegas, Nev.
Mr. Purdy. How long have you lived there?
Mr. McWillie. Well, off and on since 1963.
Mr. Purdy. What is your present occupation?
Mr. McWillie. I work in a gambling house.
Mr. Purdy. Prior to your present employment, where did you
work?
Mr. McWillie. Binion's Horse Shoe Club.
Mr. Purdy. Have you been involved in working in gambling
casinos since you moved to Las Vegas in 1963?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, sir.
Mr. Purdy. For how many years have you been involved in
gambling casinos and gambling operations throughout the country?
Mr. McWilue. I would say 46 years.
Mr. Purdy. In what cities have you been involved in gambling
operations or casinos?
Mr. McWillie. Oh, what cities?
Mr. Purdy. Yes, sir.
Mr. McWillie. In this country?
Mr. Purdy. Or in other countries.
Mr. McWillie. Well, I started off in Memphis, Tenn., and then I
was in Mississippi.
3
Mr. Purdy. Approximately when? Please give the years in which
you were in those cities also.
Mr. McWillie. Oh, I would say Memphis, 1932-36.
Mr. Purdy. What city were you working in gambling casinos
after that?
Mr. McWillie. Prior to that?
Mr. Purdy. After that,
Mr. McWillie. After that?
Mr. Purdy. Subsequent to 1936?
Mr. McWillie. Then I was in Jackson, Miss, after that.
Mr. Purdy. How long were you working and living in Jackson,
Miss.?
Mr. McWillie. Well, a short while, and then in Osyka, Miss,
Mr. Purdy. Were you also involved in gambling there?
Mr. McWillie. Yes sir.
Mr. Purdy. When did you leave there and where did you go?
Mr. McWillie. I left there, lets see, I would say 1939 or 1940. I
don't know exactly.
Mr. Purdy. What cities did you work in since then?
Mr. McWillie, Dallas.
Mr. Purdy. Were you involved in gambling in Dallas?
Mr. McWillie. I was a dealer there, yes.
Mr. Purdy. During what years did you live in Dallas?
Mr, McWillie. I would say from 1940 to 1958.
Mr. Purdy. Where did you go after you lived in Dallas?
Mr. McWillie. After I left Dallas?
Mr. Purdy. Yes.
Mr. McWillie. I went to Cuba.
Mr. Purdy. Were you involved in gambling in Cuba?
Mr. McWillie. I managed the Tropicana Night Club.
Mr. Purdy. Were you involved in gambling?
Mr. McWillie. Yes sir.
Mr. Purdy. Subsequent to your work in Cuba, where did you
move to?
Mr. McWillie. Subsequent. That means afterwards?
Mr. Purdy. Yes.
Mr. McWillie. I went to Miami and stayed until the first of
June.
Mr. Purdy. The first of June of what year?
Mr. McWillie. 1961.
Mr. Purdy. Were you involved in gambling in Miami?
Mr. McWillie. No.
Mr. Purdy. Where did you live after you left Miami?
Mr. McWillie. After I left Miami I went to Lake Tahoe.
Mr. Purdy. Were you involved in gambling in Lake Tahoe?
Mr. McWilue. Yes, I was* a pit boss.
Mr. Purdy. When did you leave Lake Tahoe?
Mr. McWillie. I left Lake Tahoe in September of 1961.
Mr. Purdy. Did you move to Las Vegas from Lake Tahoe?
Mr. McWillie. I moved to Reno.
Mr. Purdy. Were you involved in gambling in Reno?
Mr. McWilue. Yes sir.
Mr. Purdy. How long were you in Reno?
4
Mr. McWillie. 1961. I left there, let's see, right before Christmas
of 1963, 1 believe.
Mr. Purdy. And you moved to Las Vegas?
Mr. McWillie. No, I went back to Miami to visit with my
mother.
Mr. Purdy. How long were you there?
Mr. McWillie. Oh, 3 weeks.
Mr. Purdy. Where did you go after you visited Miami?
Mr. McWillie. I went back to Las Vegas.
Mr. Purdy. Have you lived in Las Vegas since?
Mr. McWillie. Off and on yes.
Mr. Purdy. You have been involved in gambling casinos while
you have been in Las Vegas?
Mr. McWillie. Well the first, you want me to tell you the casi-
nos?
Mr. Purdy. I don't think we need to cover the specific casinos at
this time.
Mr. McWillie. Yes, I was involved in casino work.
Mr. Purdy. What has been the nature of your involvement in
casino work over these years?
Mr. McWillie. Working in the gambling part of it, overseeing
the gambling.
Mr. Purdy. Mr. McWillie, what were the circumstances sur-
rounding your first encounter with Jack Ruby?
Mr. McWillie. What were the circumstances?
Mr. Purdy. Yes, how did you meet Jack Ruby?
Mr. McWillie. Well, I told you that in this. I met him in a
restaurant.
Mr. Purdy. Approximately when?
Mr. McWillie. I would say 1951.
Mr. Purdy. Someone introduced you to him in a restaurant in
Dallas in 1951?
Mr. McWillie. Yes sir.
Mr. Purdy. Do you remember who introduced you?
Mr. McWillie. He introduced himself to me.
Mr. Purdy. He just walked up to you?
Mr. McWillie. Well, I noticed him at the counter. We went into
this restaurant every night to eat and three or four nights he was
at the counter and staring at fellows and myself and I asked
someone who he was and I don't know, one of them knew him or
not, they said he had a night club or something.
Anyway, about the third or fourth night when we got up to leave
he walked over and introduced himself to me and I said nice to
meet you and what do you want, Mr. Ruby? And, he went on to tell
me about he was having trouble with his night club and had some
kind of curfew put on him and I asked him, I said, Mr. Ruby, you
are Jewish, aren't you, and he said, yes. I said well, there is a
gentleman here in town by the name of Julius Schepps that might
be able to help you, if there is nothing bad wrong with you, so I
suggested that he go see Mr. Schepps, and he did, and he seemed to
get his trouble straightened out.
Mr. Purdy. Mr. Schepps was able to help Jack Ruby?
Mr. McWillie. Evidently, because he didn't have any more
trouble.
5
Mr. Purdy. What was the nature of your next few meetings with
Jack Ruby. How did you happen to see him again after he came up
and introduced himself?
Mr. McWillie. Well, he called me on the phone and he thanked
me and I met him back in the restaurant, and from then on he was
just around me every time he got a chance he would be around.
Mr. Purdy. How would you characterize your relationship with
Jack Ruby in the 1950's in Dallas?
Mr. McWillie. 1950's, I wasn't around him a real lot, you might
say, he would come out to my apartment and swim in the pool and
he was a kind of a leech, you might say.
Mr. Purdy. Kind of a leech?
Mr. McWillie. Leech. And he was just a hard fellow to get rid of.
Mr. Purdy. You say he came over uninvited?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, he came over uninvited after so long a time
and he would hang around the pool everyday and swim and have
dinner with me and different things.
Mr. Purdy. Did you ever have to ask him to leave?
Mr. McWillie. I don't recall. I could have. I don't recall it,
though.
Mr. Purdy. Were you and Jack Ruby friends during the 1950's?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, we were friends.
Mr. Purdy. Were you aware that Jack Ruby considered you one
of his closest friends?
Mr. McWillie. I would have to say so, yes, on account of the
favors I had done him.
Mr. Purdy. What was the reason?
Mr. McWillie. The favors I have done him.
Mr. Purdy. So he liked you because you had done favors for him?
Mr. McWillie. I helped him.
Mr. Purdy. How had you helped him other than getting Mr.
Julius Schepps to help him? Did you help him in any other way?
Mr. McWillie. I helped him with, he had a union problem, he
called me in Las Vegas in the early part of 1963.
Mr. Purdy. We will go into that in more detail in a little while.
Mr. McWilue. All right.
Mr. Purdy. Were you aware that Jack Ruby included you on a
list of people who might dislike him?
Mr. McWillie. He put me on a list of people that might dislike
him?
Mr. Purdy. Yes.
Mr. McWillie. No, I am not.
Mr. Purdy. Was there any reason that you could think of that
Jack Ruby might think that you disliked him?
Mr. McWillie. No way.
Mr. Purdy. Did Jack Ruby idolize you?
Mr. McWillie. In a sort of way I would think so, yes.
Mr. Purdy. Why did he idolize you?
Mr. McWillie. I guess because I had helped him keep his busi-
ness open.
Mr. Purdy. What contacts, if any, did you have with Jack Ruby's
family, friends and business associates?
6
Mr. McWillie. I didn^t even know his family or friends, I didn^t
know his family. He told me that he had a brother who was sick
and his sister was ill, someway. He didn^t elaborate.
Mr. Purdy. Did you have any mutual friends?
Mr. McWillie. Sir?
Mr. Purdy. Did you have any mutual friends?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, we had friends, a friend named Meyer
Panitz, and Jake Rifkin, they were good friends of his.
Mr. Purdy. They were also good friends of yours?
Mr. McWillie. Oh, yes, they were friends of mine in Memphis.
Mr. Purdy. Is there anyone else you can think of that was a
friend of both you and Jack Ruby?
Mr. McWillie. No, I donT. He probably knew everybody in town
on account of this night club he had.
Mr. Purdy. Did you know a lot of people in Dallas also?
Mr. McWillie. Quite a few, yes.
Mr. Purdy. Other than what you have mentioned, did you do
anything else with Jack Ruby, such as travel with him?
Mr. McWillie. No, no, never traveled with Jack Ruby.
Mr. Purdy. What knowledge do you have of Jack Ruby's possible
involvement in any criminal activities?
Mr. McWillie. None whatever, sir.
Mr. Purdy. What is your opinion of Jack Ruby's personality?
What kind of a man was he?
Mr. McWillie. Well, Jack was a man that, he wanted to be a big
man in the entertainment field, I would say, the biggest, and he
was kind of an egotist, I guess, and I don't know.
Mr. Purdy. Was he a thoughtful man, was he a gentle man?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, he was, he was as far as I know.
Mr. Purdy. Was he ever a violent man?
Mr. McWillie. Not around me, no sir.
Mr. Purdy. Mr. McWillie, did you give a deposition to staff
members of this committee on April 4, 1978?
Mr. McWilue. Yes sir.
Mr. Purdy. Mr. Chairman, I ask at this time that that deposition
be entered into the record as JFK exhibit No. F-572.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, it will be admitted into the
record at this point.
Mr. Purdy. Mr. Chairman, I also ask at this time that two FBI
interviews of Mr. McWillie be entered into the record as JFK
exhibits F-573 and F-574.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, they will be admitted into the
record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibits F-572, F-573, and F-574
follow:]
R«P(krti[if CfliBB'jiif,^liic
^OQ S«iv«£ilh SlL, S. .W. Wftfthlnfr^aii.
8
JFK Exhibit F-572
To; G. Robert Blakey
From: Howard Shapiro
Re; Smnmary of Deposition of Lewis McWillie
Taken by Jim Wolf and Andy Purdy, 4/4/78
A. McWillie biographical data
McWillie was born May 4, 1908 in Kansas City, Missouri (p. 4). His
current address is 3627 Eastern Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada (p. 3). He is
currently employed as a floorman at the Holiday Inn casino in Las Ve-
gas (p. 4) and has worked at various casinos for many years.
McWillie worked at the Blue Bonnet Hotel in Dallas in 1941 and
1942 (p. 8), and then worked at the Top of the Hill Terrace in Arlington,
Texas for eight or nine years (p. 7). Then he ran a gambling house
in Fort Sorth for several years called the Four Duces (p. 6).
Following this he worked at the Troplcana and Capri Hotel in Cuba
(p. 6), and spent some time working in Aruba and Curacao (p. 5). In 1961
he began working in Nevada, at the Cal-Neva Lodge (p. 5), and then at
the Riverside Hotel, Thunderbird Club, Carousel Club (Las Vegas),
Horseshoe Club, ans finally the Holiday Inn casino (pp. 4-5).
B. Relationship with Jack Ruby
McWillie met Ruby in 1951. He would see Ruby occasionally in a
late-night restaurant and was told that Ruby ran the Vegas Club. "Fi-
nally, one night we got up to go out into the lobby of the hotel and he
walked up to me and said, *Is your name McWillie?* I said, *Yes.* And
he explained who he was and that he was Jewish and that he was having a
problem with his night club** (p. 9).
Ruby’s problem apparently concerned a curdew and possible dis-
criminatory enforcement by somebody (p. 11). McWillie advised Ruby to
9
speak to an Individual named Schepps (p. 9). Between 1951 and 1958
McWlllle could not get rid of Ruby and they became pretty good friends
(pp. 9. 23).
The last time McWlllle saw Ruby was In 1961 when McWlllle was drlv
Ing from Miami to Las Vegas and he stayed overnight In Dallas (p. 80).
While In Las Vegas McWlllle received several letters from Ruby which
concerned Ruby’s Carousel club In Dallas and how nice It was and Items
of this nature (p, 79).
Early In 1963 McWlllle called Ruby and wanted Ruby to go to a gun
dealer In Dallas (Ray Brantley) and purchase a handgun and send It to
Las Vegas, as McWlllle stated that he didn’t know where to go In Las
Vegas to get a gun (pp. 19-20). McWlllle did not recall asking Ruby
to send him four guns (to Cuba) In 1959 (pp. 21, 69).
In 1963 Ruby called McWlllle to see If he could help out with Ruby
labor and union (AGVA) problems. McWlllle suggested contaclng William
Miller, who was In the entertainment field. Ruby did this and later
called McWlllle a number of times to express his thanks for McWlllle ’r,
aid (pp. 17, 71). McWlllle had no familiarity with AGVA’s operations
in Dallas (p. 71) .
McWlllle several times denied making statements to the FBI in
1963 and 1964 (p. 113) concerning Ruby.
C. McWlllle in Cuba
McWlllle was in Cuba from the middle of 1958 until January 1,
1961. Johnny Williams contacted McWlllle about a possible job at the
Tropicana in Cuba (p. 82), so McWlllle went to Cuba and met with the
Tropicana’s owners, Martinez and Pedro Fox (p. 83), He got the job and
10
was later promised a percentage of the club's profits if it was a suc-
cess but this did not turn out to be the case (p. 85) . When the govern-
ment closed the clubs the Foxes vent to Miami (p. 86).
In Cuba McWillie knew Santos Trafficante and Norman Rothman but just
in the sense of casually seeing them (p, 91). He saw Trafficante in
prison once but did not talk to him (p. 92). He did see Dino Cellini
in prison, as Cellini was at one time manager at the Tropic ana (p. 94).
McWillie 's reason for visiting the prison at all was to see a younger
Individual who had been a dealer at the club (p. 95).
McWillie also met Jake Lansky In Cuba (p. 96), and he made a num-
ber of trips to Miami to deposit money in banks for the Foxes (p. 99) .
McWillie stated that the Cuban government never bothered him (p.
93). After leaving Cuba he had strong anti-Castro feelings*
D. Ruby in Cuba
McWillie convinced the Foxes that one way to get more business for
the Tropicana would be to have Tony Zoppl, a Dallas entertainment col-
umnist, come to Cuba and then give the club a write-up. To do this Hc-
Willie invited Zoppi and Ruby (they were also friendly) to Cuba and he
called Ruby in the spring of 1959 to Inform him of this plan (p. 12).
Ruby said that he would get Zoppl to go along with the plan (p. 106), and
McWillie eventually sent two airplane tickets to Dallas (pp. 13, 108),
Zoppl couldn't make the trip so Ruby came by himself, in August, 1959,
which foiled the publicity angle (p. 13). McWillie did not know why
Zoppl did not come (p. Ill),
11
HcWillie displayed part of a letter written by Zoppl to Matty
Brescia Enterprises in whixh Zoppl states that any theories concerning
the assassination and Ruby and Cuban links are not true (pp* 14—15).
Ruby stayed in Cuba for about six days and McWillle believes that
he then went back to Dallas (p. 17). McWillle can*t remember what V
did in Cuba besides annoy him (p. 103). McWillle did Introduce Ruby
to the Foxes (p. 86), and says that he Is not sure If Ruby accompanied
him on any prison visits (p. 133). McWillle dosen't recall a one-day
Ruby visit to Cuba and says that If this occurred in 1959 then he would
know about It (p. 133).
E. McWillle associates
McWillle says that he knows R.D. Matthews, a Dallas gambler (p.-;
40). He knew Joseph Civello in Dallas (p. 59), and he knew Jack Todd
and saw Todd once or twice in Cuba, but Ruby wasn’t In Cuba at those
times (p. 61). He knew Sam Yaras, brother of organized crime ilgure Dave
Yaras (pp, 64-65).
McWillle knew George Butler of the Dallas police (p. 74). He knew
Meyer Panitz well (p. 100). He knew Mike McLaney and worked for him at
one time, in 1975. He also knew Mike’s brother Bill McLaney (p. 123).
F. Ruby information
McWillle says that Ruby always had a gun, in order to protect
the receipts from his club, and he remembers the sack wherein Ruby kept
the gun and money (pp. 20, 70).
There was no gambling activity at the Vegas Club and this club
was full of customers all the time (pp. 23, 26). McWillie was never In
12
Ruby's Carousel club. Ruby himself vould never gamble on anything
and was not Involved with gambling in any way (pp. 33, 36, 5A) . Ruby
did not know any of the pminent Dallas gambling figures (pp, A5-46) .
Ruby was a frugal individual (p. 36) . He was always courteous to
Dallas policemen and gave them whiskey as Christmas presents (p. 72).
McWillle believes that Ruby had wanted to be a big man around Dallas
n and that he shot Oswald order to become a martyr of some sorts (pp.
30, 129-130).
G. Ruby associates
McWillle says that two of Ruby's closest friends were Jake Rif-
kin, a gambler, and Mark Fanitz, although this may be Meyer Fanltz
(pp. 27-28), whome McWillle later describes as one of Ruby's closest*
friends (p. 101). Fanitz is described as a bookmaker.
Ruby knew W.C. Kirkwood, but not his son Fat Kirkwood (p. 33).
Ruby knew the Campisi brothers in Dallas and thinks that Ruby knew
Jack Todd (pp. 59, 62). Ruby knew Gordon McLendon very well (p. 73).
About four months ago Earl Ruby introduced himself to McWillle
in Las Vegas and said he was in town working on a documentary about
Jack Ruby. McWillle told Earl Ruby that he wasn't Interested in talking
to him and that his relationship with Jack Ruby had already caused him
enough problems (pp. 38-39).
13
Index of Names for McWillle Deposition
Dick Anconl
58
Johnny Avon
43, 46
Barney Baker
64
>^3abe Baron
88
Dominic Bar tone
118
Sam Benton
118
Benny Bickers
44, 46
Benny Binion
42, 43, 45
Willie Bischorf
(aka Lefty Clark)
87, 88
Johnny Blaine
134
Hay Brantley
20
James Breen
67
Bunny Breen
67
Edward Browder
118
Fred Browning
7, 44, 45,
Angelo Bruno
87
George Butler
74
Billy Byers
57-58
Joe Camplsi
59-60
Sam Camplsi
59-60
FNU Carr away
56
•*/Dino Cellini
94-95, 134
Berle Cheek
43-44, 46
Oscar Cheninder
86, 132
Joe Civello
59
Jim Clunen
17
Raymond Cortez
131
Earl Dalton
7-8, 42, 5]
Richard Danner
126
James Henry Dolan
71
Paul Dorfman
65
David Elatkin
132
Marty Field
58-59
William E. Fletcher
131
^Martinez, Pedro Fox
83, 85-86,
Sidney Fruhraan
31
Sam Giancana
97, 125
Eva Grant
38
Lois Green
61
Johnny Crizzaffi
60
Dewey Groom
58
Pete Guarisco
40
Steve Guthrie
48
Harry Hall
57
J. Patrick Hemming
122
John Wilson Hudson
93
E. Howard Hunt
127
H.L. Hunt
57, 74
Paul R, Jones
67
Fay Kirkwood
32. 35
Pat Kirkwood
32-34
W.C. Kirkwood
32-35, 44
99, 105, 116-117
35-379 0 - 79-2
14
Jay Kosloff
5
Jake Lansky
95, 134
Meyer Lansky
95
Robert Larkin
132
^incent Lee
71
'^like McLaney
122-123, 125
William McLaney
123-125
Robert McKeown
68, 118
Cordon McLendon
72-73
Carlos » Vincent Marcello
39
John Thomas Masen
68
Elizabeth Ann Matthews
40
Russell D. Matthews
40-41
Joseph Merola
68
Lawrence Meyers
65
Ivy Miller
7-8, 42-43, /
Izzy Miller
62
Misty Lane Miller
102
William Miller
18, 135
Juan Orta
131
''Mark, Meyer Fanltz
28, 100-102,
Tony Fappa
72
Lenny Patrick
64
Sid Richardson
56, 58
T.W. Richardson
83-84
Jake Rlfkin
27-29, 135
Helen Alfonse Roan
67
John Roselll
96-97, 125
Norman Rothman
91, 94
Earl Ruby
38
Sam Ruby
39
Henry Savadra
131
Red Scarborough
7, 42-43, 46,
Julius Schepps
9-11, 22, 75
Mike Shore
72
Sidney Sledband
61
John Eli Stone
63
Frank Sturgis
126
Jack Todd
61
vSantos Trafficante
91-94, 134
Harry Urban
51
FNU Ventura
90
Abe Weinstein
132
Ben Whittaker
45-46
Johnny Williams
82-83
Will Wilson
48
Dave Yaras
64
Sam Yaras
64-65
Jess Zllliack
49
%^ony Zoppl
12-14, 16, 2i
51-52, 75
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UNITED STATES OF AMEfU!CA
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SELECT CCMttTTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS
DEPOSITION OF LEWIS J. MC WILLIE, a witness pro-
duced, sworn, and examined on Tuesday, the 4th day of April,
in the year of our Lord 1978, between the hours of 8 o'clock
in the forenoon and 6 o'clock in the afternoon of that day,
in Room 4-00^, Federal Courthouse, 210 Las Vegas Boulevard,
before the Select Committee on Assassinations, House of
Representatives of the United States of America.
APPEARANCES:
For the Committee:
JAMES WOLF,
Deputy Chief Coxinsel,
Select Committee on Assassinations,
U. S. House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C.
DONALD A. PURDY,
Staff Counsel,
Select Committee on Assassinations,
U. S. House of Representatives,
Washington, D. C.
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LEWIS J, MC WILLIE
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of lawful age, being produced, sworn, and examined on the
part of the Committee, deposeth and saith:
MR. WOLF: The record should note that the witness
has been sworn by Magistrate Ward.
My name is Janes Wolf, My co-counsel today is
Donald Purdy and we both have been, pursuant to House
Resolution 222 and Committee Rule 4, designated counsel
empowered to take statements under oath.
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. WOLF;
Q. Will the witness please state his name for the
record?
A. Sir?
Q. Will the witness please state his name for the
record?
A. Lewis J. Mcwillie,
Q. And, Mr. McWillie, you have been subpoenaed by
the House Committee but instead of an appearance in
Washington, you requested that this deposition take place
in —
A. (Interrupting) Yes, i just had an operation on
my eye.
Q. Excuse me, sir.
A. I just had an operation on my eyes. I had a de-
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tached retina in my left eye, right eye, too.
Q. And this deposition is taking place at your re-
quest, then, to avoid an appearance in Washington, is that
correct?
A. I wanted to be close to my doctors, yes,
Q. Mr. McWillie, you are aware that under our
Committee *s rules, you have the right to have counsel with
you at this deposition.
A. I don*t need any counsel, I don't think.
Q. And, Mr. McWillie, you have been given a copy of
our Committee Rules and House Resolutions 222, 433 and 760,
is that correct?
A. To tell you the truth, I didn't read it. I just
knew it was a subpoena.
Q. Well, are you aware of Committee Rule 4, which is
about the designated counsel taking your statements under
oath? You have been given a copy of the Committee Rules, is
that correct?
A. Yes.
BY MR. PURDY:
Q. Mr. McWillie, could you please state your present
address?
A. 3627 Eastern Avenue.
Q. in Las Vegas?
A. Las Vegas, yes.
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Q. What is your date and place of birth?
A. Kansas City, Missouri, 1908.
Q. What was the no nth and day?
A. May 4th.
Q, What is your present occupation?
A. I a floorman in a casino.
Q. What casino is that?
A. Holiday inn.
Q- How long have you worked there?
A- I *ve worked there a little over a year, about
14 months.
Q. Where did you work before that?
A. I worked before that at the Horseshoe Club.
Q. How long did you work there?
A. I worked there on and off many years, since *67,
believe.
Q. Do you recall where you worked prior to that?
A. I worked at the Carousel Club.
Q- How long did you work there?
A. Let me see, about three years, I guess.
Q- That would be 1964 to 1967?
A. I would say so. I *m not sure but I would say
that's about the date.
Q. What city was that?
A. Here in Las Vegas.
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Q.
A.
Q.
A.
Q-
A.
Q-
A.
and went
Q.
A.
Q.
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Antilles .
£ erred to
Q.
A,
Q.
A.
woriced.
Where did you work prior to 19647
1964 I worked at the Riverside Hotel in Reno.
How long did you work there?
I worked there the latter part of *61 through *62.
What was your job prior to that?
What was my job, where did I work prior to that?
Yes.
I worked at the Thunderbird Hotel- I left there
to the Thunderbird Hotel.
How long did you work there?
I worked there about a year .
Where did you work prior to that?
I went to an island named Arruba, the Motherland
I stayed there maybe a month and then was trans-
Curacao. I stayed there about nine months.
Who transferred you to Curacao?
Jay Kosloff, K-o-s-l-o-£-£ .
Prior to working in Arruba, where did you work?
I went from Arruba to Curacao, last place I
Q. No, I mean prior to Arruba, where did you work?
A. Prior to Arruba I worked at the — wait a minute
now. Wait just a minute. I skipped one place I didn*t tell
you. Before I went to the Riverside, I worked at the Cal-
Neva Lodge. In >61 I was at the Cal-Neva Lodge.
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Q. So you worked —
A. (Interrupting) Then I went to the other place*.
Q. Then you went on to Arrxiba and Curacao?
A. Yes.
Q. Prior to working at the Cal-Neva Lodge, where did
you work?
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A. Prior to that I worked in Cuba.
Q. Did you viork in Bavanna at that time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you work at the Tropicana then?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you viodc at any other—
A. (Interrupting) I worked in the Capri Hotel, I
don't )cnow how long, it wasn't very long, though.
Q, Where did you work prior to working at the
Tropicana and the Capri Hotels?
A. in Dallas.
Q. Where did you work in Dallas?
A. Well, I had a little gambling house, let me see,
in Fort Worth.
Q. Bow long did you run that gambling house?
A. We had it a couple or three years, I guess. I
don't exactly remanber how long.
Q. What was the name of that gambling house?
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A.
The Pour Duces we called it. Prior to that I
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worked at the Top of the Hill Terrace in Arlington, Texas.
Q. How long did you work there?
A. Oh, I *d say eight years, nine years.
Q. Who did you work for there?
A. Who did I work for? I worked for a man named
Fred Browning and I worked for Earl Dalton, ivy Miller and
a fellow named Scarborough.
Q. What kind of work did you do at that club?
A. I was a manager.
Q. You managed the gambling activities?
A. The gambling, yes.
Q. When did you begin the gambling operation at the
Four Duces?
A. Doggone if I know. i think it was *51, I *m not
sure, not positive.
Q. What kind of gambling went on there?
A. Dice games and 21 game.
Q. Just dice and card games ?
A. Yes.
Q. Was there any numbers operation working out of
there?
A. No, no, it was a little place.
Q. Where did you work prior to the Four Duces?
A. I told you that, at the Top of the Hill Terrace.
Q. Where did you work prior to that?
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A. Let me see. I worked in Dallas at a place called
the Blue Bonnet Hotel, I believe it was.
Q. Was there a gambling operation there?
A. Yes .
Q. What kind of gambling was there?
A. Dice game.
Q. Who did you work for there?
A. I worked for Miller.
Q. Ivy Miller?
A. Ivy Miller and Earl Dalton, the only two I
know I was working for.
Q. When did you begin your work at the Blue Bonnet?
A. Let me see. It was so long ago. I *d say '41 or
'42, I 'm not sure.
Q. So you worked at the Blue Bonnet from 1941 to *42
until you worked at the Pour Duces?
A. I don't think I worked for the Blue Bonnet but
about a year. Then i went out to the Top of the Hill.
Q. So you worked in Dallas at the Blue Bonnet, then
the Top of the Hill, then the Four Duces?
A. That's right.
Q. So the first club that you owned, what was the
first club that you owned? Has that the Four Duces?
A. That was the Fotur Duces, yes.
Q. So the other places you worked for other people.
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is that right?
A. Other people, yes.
Q. Mr. McWillie, when did you meet Jack Ruby?
A. Jack Ruby, I *ve tried to think what year it was.
DO you want me to tell you the whole story about Jack Ruby
from the beginning to the end?
Q. I ^ink that would be a good idea, yes, sir.
A. I believe it was when I was at the Four Duces
a nd a couple of dealers and myself would stop in an all-
night restaurant and get a bite to eat when we come in, may-
be 2 o*clock, 1 o'clock, 3 o'clock. I noticed a fellow at
the counter with a hat on, whibh was very unusual to see a
fellow with a hat on around Dallas. I asked one of the
fellows, I said, "who is that fellow?" He kept looking at
us. He said, "That's a fellow named Jack Ruby that rune a
club named the Vegas Club out on Oak Lawn", I believe it
%« 8 . About three or four nights he was there.
Finally, one night we got up to go out into the
lobby of the hotel and he walked up to me and said, "la
your name McWillie?" I said, "yes.” And he explained who
he was and that he was Jewish and that he was having a prob-
lem with his night club. He talked like a real nice fellow.
I said, "why don't you go see Mr, Schepps, a man named
Julius Schepps.” He owned a big liquor distributing place
there and he used to play with us at the Top of the Hill, a
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real n ic e roa n .
MR. WOLF: Could you spell the name Schepps?
THE WITNESS: I *d have to say it was S-c-h-e-
p-p-s .
BY MR. PURDY:
Q. Do you remember his first name?
A. Julius.
BY MR. WOU:
Q. Also for the record, what year was this that you
first met Jack Ruby?
A. I don*t know. I think it was around ^51, I be-
lieve. I would have to say it was around ^51, I don‘t
know exactly. I tried to think what year it was.
BY MR. PURDY:
Q. What was the name of the restaurant you say you
saw him?
A. It was a place called Webb's Coffee Shop in the
Southland Hotel.
MR. WOI^E: Continue.
A. And then i suggested that he go see him. He was
a big Jewish leader in the city. And he did. From then on
I cold never get rid of Jack Ruby. Jack Ruby was at my
apartment. He was around roe all the time. He just appre-
ciated, I guess, what I had done for him.
So, finally, I went to Cuba, I think, in *58, I
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believe .
BY MR. PURDY:
Q. Could we back up just a little bit before we move
on to ' 58 .
What was the nature of the problem that Jack Ruby
was having with his club?
A. They were making him close early or soroething.
Q. Was this a curfarf?
A. They enforced a curfew on him, so he said, I don*t
know .
Q. Was it your impression that they were enforcing
a rule against him that they were not enforcing against other
clubs?
A. That *8 what he said.
Q. Why did you refer him to Mr. Schepps?
A. He said he was Jewish, therfore, Mr. Schepps was
a big leader in the Jewish community, and I didn*t know if he
could do him any good or not, to tell you the truth. But
he evidently did him good. He didn't have no more trouble
after that.
Q. Did Mr. Schepps have good connections with the
authorities in Dallas thatcould help Jack Ruby?
A. He was a well-known man and a well-liked man. He
was just a fine man, Mr. Schepps was.
Q. What was his occupation?
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A. He had a liquor distributing, i think it's Sea-
grams ,
Q. DO you want to proceed with your story about Jack
Ruby 7
A. If you want me to,
Q. Please, sure.
A. So when I go to Cuba in, I believe it was the
middle of *58, I *m not positive of what date it was, and I
get this job at the Tropicana Hotel, managing the Tropicana
Hotel with a promise of a percentage of the place when it
got to doing good, which it never did much good on account
of the revolution coming up and all that. I stayed there
until, I don*t know how long i stayed there. I stayed there
after Castro got there anyway, *59, maybe in the latter part
of *59 or *60. And then i went up — they didn't close it,
the government took it. And from there I went up to the
Capri and stayed there a very short while, I don't know how
long, before the government took it. And from then on I
wasn't doing anything until I went to Miami.
Q. Could you continue on your contact with Jack Ruby
over those years?
A. When i was in the Tropicana, they were hunting for
business, trying to get business, and I suggested that I
call Jack Ruby and have him get ahold of Tony Zoppi . Tony
Zoppi is a well known columnist like Bishop, Earl Wilson,
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people like that. That's the kind of a man he was in
Dallas and all society people read his column. He wrote
me back that they'd come over on a certain date. So I
sent him two tickets, which the pl2K:ejaid for. Then I ex-
plained to him we would pay for their room. We figured we
would get a lot of publicity from it and people from Dallas
would come to Cuba.
I^ater on, if I renember right. Jack came and
said that, what's his name, Tony couldn't make it. Ttiat 's
the cause of all my problems. Here's a letter. Would you
care to see this? It's from ray brother to me. A fellow
had written my brother a letter and put a piece in there
where Zoppi had — ray brother's letter is kind of a personal
letter .
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BY MR. WOLF:
Q. Is this the letter you would like us to read?
A. That's from my brother. It explains that he's
sending me this piece. It's just a personal letter but in
it he states where he's sending me a — would you like me
to come over there?
Q. Yes, if you would, to explain these.
A. This is part of the letter and this is the man that
sent my brother the letter. This is really what I wanted
you to see (indicating).
Q. This is a copy of a portion of a letter that
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Tony Zoppi sent to —
A. (interrupting) That *s the original letter .
Q. This is the original letter?
A. 'niat*s the original part. The other part of the
letter didn't mean a darn thing to me.
Q. Tony Zoppi sent this to whom?
A. To the man's name you've got thsre in your right
hand .
Q. To Matty Brescia Enterprises?
A. Yes.
Q. Mr. McWillie* could we retain these for the
record?
A. Could you make a copy of it and give me back
that part?
MR. WOLF: For the record, Mr. McWillie has
given us part of a letter allegedly sent by Tony Zoppi to
a Matty Brescia, B-r-e-s-c-i-a , Enterprises at 4990
Poplar, Suite 331, Memphis, Tennessee 38117, and I will
read that portion of the letter which Mr. McWillie has
given us .
It states, "Give my regard to McWillie next time
you are in touch, jack Ruby and I were supposed to visit
him in Havana but I got side tracked. Jack went on ahead
and it has caused Mac^ a lot of trouble over the years.
The quick buck artists are saying Jack went down there to
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plan the assassination. He couldn*t have planned a gas
station holdup in those days. All of a sudden, he's a CIA
agent, a Mafiadon, et cetera, et cetera, sickening. Keep
in touch and God bless. Keep up the good work and I will
say another prayer for Buddy."
THE WITITESS; That's his kid that got killed
MR. WOLF: "sincerely, Tony."
Buddy is Tony's son who got killed.
THE WITNESS: They're good friends, both in the
same kind of work. This fellow writes for a variety maga-
zine.
MR. WOLF; You're speaking of Matty Brescia?
IHE WITNESS: Tony is a published, man at tbe
Riveria Hotel,
BY MR. PORDY:
Q. Who is Buddy?
A. Read it over about Buddy.
MR, WOLF: "Keep up the good work and I will say
another prayer for Buddy. "
A. Buddy was his son, young son. He was sitting in
a window and he fell out of the window audit killed him,
BY MR. WOLF;
Q. Is that Mat Brescia's son?
A. Matty Brescia's son.
You can keep that if you want to if you give me a
35-379 0 - 79-3
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copy of it.
MR. WOLF: Surely, than)c you.
BY MR. WOLF:
Q. You've not given us the top of the letter. XX)
you )cnovi approximately w>»t date this was written?
A. It's on the envelope with the date I received the
letter from my brother .
Q. It's stamped Memphis, Tennessee, 18 August 1976.
A. It must have been right around that time, I guess.
Q. TO the best of your Icncw ledge, your brother for-
warded this to you as soon as your brother had received it?
A. I'm sure he did, yes.
Q. And how did your brother get the letter from Mr.
Brescia ?
A. Brescia gave it to him.
Q. And your brother *8 located in Memphis, Tennessee?
A. Isn't there a yellow piece of piper in there from
Brescia, a white piece maybe? I thin)c there's a letter in
there from Brescia.
Q. Yes, there's a portion of a letter that says,
"Hi, Jim." Is that your brother's name, Jim?
A. Jim, yes.
Q. It says, "Thought you'd want to see this letter
from Louie's and my friend, Tony Zoppi, former columnist in
Dallas, now big executive at the Riveria in Vegas. Show
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this Louie when you see him. He would like it. Pray tor
our dear son and us. It was a tragic loss. Jim, Monsignor
Clunen, C-l-u-n-e-n, delivered the mass and eulogy. God
bless you always. Your friend and Louie's and your family,
Matty Brescia . "
Thank you, Mr. McWillie, we'll make copies and
return them back to you.
BY MR. WOLF:
Q. If you could continue, you were talking about
inviting Jack and Tony down to visit you at the Tropicana.
A. Tony didn't come and he came. I think he stayed
around there about six days. I was at the Tropicana at
the time. He was there every night that he was in Havana
and after that he went back to Dallas. That's the last time
I've seen him in Havana. He never came back to Havana.
Q, And if you would continue your relationship to
Jack after you came back.
A. He'd write me letters. Oh, I'll tell you another
thing about him. in, Ibelieve it was the early part of
1963, he called me up and he was having seme trouble with
the AGVA. Wiat's the American Guild of Variety Artists.
He said, "Mac|^, do you know anybody that knows the president
of the company?" I explained all of this to the PBI. You
can check with them, I don't think I told them about Zoppi,
I forgot about it. I didn't tell them.
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He said, '*If you can find somebody that knows the
president, I *m having a lot of trouble with my competition.”
I understand he*d had another place. At that time he had
a place up town right next to this other place- I said,
“well, I know a man that might know him”, a man named Bill
Miller who was an entertainment director at the Hilton
Hotels. I called Bill and I said, “Bill, there's a friend
of mine that's having trouble with the AGVA . " I knew he
knew the president because I had heard him speak of it. I
ran the place in Reno for him. I said, "is there anything
you could do for him?" I gave him Jack's number. I said,
"call him and see what you can do for him."
So another day or two went by and Jack called me.
If he called me once, he called me five times thanking me,
thanking me, thanking me, like to ran me crazy. Then I
got letters from him. Prior to that he got into some kind
of razor blade deal, some kind of razor blade that came out
in England, what do they call it, but it was supposed to be
a terrific razor blade. So he sent me three or four packages
in an envelope, just stuff like that.
Jack was a kind of a, he wanted to be a big man,
do you know what I mean. He was kind of an egotist. That
was about it with Jack. He just wanted to be around me for
some reason. i don't, know why. He just did.
Q, What were the nature of your contacts with Jack
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Ruby after he left Havana other than that one phone call
where he called you for help with the union?
A. I called him one time, I was working the grave-
yard, they call it the graveyard, at the 'Hiunderbird at the
time. That's from 2 to 12 in the daytime, I think it was
2 to 12. And there were a bunch of people holding people
up around there. If they didn't have any money on them,
enough for them, they would beat them up. So I called
Ruby and asked Ruby to send me a gun. At thar time the
kids were just little kids, six and five, seven or six.
I never did take the gun out. I just let it go back. My
wife was scared the kids would get ahold of it some way
and maybe get hurt.
BY MR. PURDY:
Q. When was that thatyou asked him to send you a gun?
A. Let me see, the gun came, you can check the gun,
check the place where he got it from. It must have been
around August, I would say. I wouldn't know for sure, though.
Q. August of what year?
A. Let me see, I think I was here, the first time I
was here was in »60. I would say the early part of '63 is
when he sent it.
Q. Why did you ask Jack R\iby to send you a gun?
A. I didn't know where to buy one here. I didn't
even know you could buy a gun in a store. I hadn't been
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here long enough to Icncw that.
Q. You had been here about two years before you asked
him to send you a gun?
A. I had been here a very short time, *63. I think
I came here in *63, I think when i went to work at the
Thunderbird, I came down from Reno. i think it was the first
pnrt of *63, I think, February of *63. This might have
happened in March, I believe, I don*t know. You can check
that out .
Q. What made you think that Jack Ruby could get you
a gun?
A. Because I told him to go to this place because I
had always bought shotguns to hunt with and rifles to hunt
deer with and everything and I knew the man.
Q, Do you know if jack Ruby had been there before?
A, No, I don*t,
Q. was it Ray Brantley?
A. It was Ray*s place.
Q. Do you know whether or not Jack Ruby had a gun
prior to that time?
A. jack always had a gun, he always carried a gun.
He didn*t carry it. He had it in his car. He would have
his receipts every night to go drop it in the bank depository.
Q. Did he have more than one gun in his home?
A. I don*t know how many he had. i wouldn*t think he
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had more than one. I never did see more than one.
Q. Do you recall telling the FBI that Jack Ruby had
a nuiuber of guns in his home?
A. Mo, I don't, I don't remember. I don't remember
the FBI even asking roe if he had any guns in his house.
Q. Can you presently recall whether or not Jack Ruby
had more than one gun?
A. Mo, sir , I don 't .
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Q. Did you ask Jack Ruby to send you four guns in
1959 ?
A. No, sir, I don't recall anything like that. I've
been asked that a lot of times . I don ' t recall that, no •
Q. Did you ever ask Jack Ruby to obtain a gun for
you other than the incident you previously testified to to-
day?
A. The only gun I ever had him get was the one that
I told you about just now,
Q. Did you ever ask him to get you other guns?
A. No, I don't recall anything like that
Q, Did you ever discuss with him how to obtain a gun
other than that particular incident?
A. I knew how to obtain a gun. At this Ray's place,
like I say, I bought a lot of guns, rifles and shotguns.
Q. But you never bought pistols there?
A. Not that I recall.
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Q. Did you take any of the guns that you *d bought at
Ray's place with you to Cuba?
A. I left them in Dallas. My wife and I separated
and she took the guns auid everything.
Q. Mr. McWillie, between the time that you asked
Julius Schepps to help Jack Ruby or you suggested to Jack
Ruby that he go to Mr. Schepps for help —
A. (interrupting) i suggested that he go and talk
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to Mr. Schepps.
Q. (Continuing) — what was the nature of your re-
lationship to Jack Ruby after that prior to the Cuba inci-
dent? What kind of a relationship did you have?
A. I never could get rid of him. He was around me
all the time. I'd have to insult him to get rid of him
Do you know what I mean? He'd come by the apartment and
he'd swim and eat dinner at the house a lot of times. I
just couldn't get rid of him that's all I can tell you.
Not that I wanted to. He was a nice fellow. Whoever
thought he would do anything like this, I didn't.
Q. Did you get to be pretty good friends with him?
A. Yes.
Q. What kinds of things did you do together?
A. Went out to dinner. I dropped by his club maybe
once or twice when he had it out on Oak Lawn. At that time
rock and roll had just started.
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Q. Which club was that?
A. The Vegas Club.
Q. What kind of operation did he have at the Vegas
Club?
A. Let me think. He had a band and he was the emcee
and he served, I think he served beer. I don't believe he
served whiskey, beer . T^iat's about all there was to it.
He had this other club after I left Dallas. I never did
even see that place. That was the one up town.
Q. Was that thei Carousel Club?
A. Yes, I never saw that.
Q. You've never been in the Carousel Club?
A. No, never in my life.
Q. Did any gambling go on at the Vegas Club, to your
knowledge?
A. No.
Q. What can you tell us about Jack Ruby's political
views? Did you ever discuss politics with him?
A. No, I never did. When i was around Jack Ruby, I
think Eisenhower was president, I believe he was.
Q. That would be the 1950 's?
A. When was Truman president, do you remember?
Q. Prior to 1952.
A. Truman was president. And I met Jack right around
the first part of the '50*8, I'd say the first part of the
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'50 's and Truman was president and Eisenhower was president.
Q. HOW did he feel about Truman and Eisenhower?
A. I never discussed politics with him.
Q. Do you know how he voted?
A. He wouldn't bet anything. I don't think he ever
bet a nickel on anything
Q. I was asking who he voted for. Do you know who
he voted for?
A. I don't know. There would be noway I'd know.
Q. Did you discuss with Jack Ruby any major events
in the country that went on in the 1950 's? Did you discuss
the Korean War, for example?
A. Nothing. We never discussed politics.
Q. Did you ever discuss Cuban^mer ican relations?
A. No, I did not.
Q. Did you ever discuss Castro or Batista with Jack
Ruby?
A. No; I never discussed any kind of politics with
jack Ruby at all.
Q. Do you ever recall Jack Ruby talking about the
Kennedys, how he felt about the Kennedys?
A. Just what I read, I think it was in Tony Zoppi 's
office right after it happened and he was crying and carrying
on, what I read in thepaper and you did, too, I 'm sure. But
I never recall him saying one word about the Kennedys.
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Q. You don't recall him expressing a great love
for the Kennedys ?
A. No, I don't, because Kennedy wasn't pesident.
Eisenhower was president. I'm sure.
Q. What kind of roan was Jack Ruby tCMard people?
A. Like I said. Jack Ruby wanted to be a big nan. Re
wanted to be the biggest night club operator in Dallas.
That's my assumption. Like 1 said before, he was kind of
an egotist and wore a hat all the time, which was very un-
usual I thought at the time. Nobody else ever wore a hat
around Dallas.
Q. Did you find him to be a violent man?
A. No, sir, he sure wasn't. New, in his club if
someone got out of line, that means fighting or something,
he would just take them and put them out. I never saw him
hurt anybody
Q. YOU never saw him even strike anyone?
A. No, I never did.
Q. Did you ever know of him beating up anyone?
A. I don't recall ever hearing him beat up anyone.
Q. Did jack Rtisy ever get in any arguments with you
or anyone else over any subject?
A. He never got in an argxment with me for sure. 1
can't recall him ever having an argument. He had a lot of
friends around Dallas, different people.
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Q. Do you remember him getting in any arguments
about his union troubles?
A. Mo.
Q. Do you remember him getting in any arguments about
paying his employees?
A. Mo.
Q. Do you remsober him getting in any arguments eibout
the strip-tease shows?
A. Like I said, when I was there, he didn*t have a
strip-tease joint. I don *t think it was strip tease. I
don*t think he ever had strip tease out at the place.
Q. Please continue.
A. I think all he had was a stage in the middle of
the place, a room a little bigger than this one. He had
a stage up against one wall and he would come out and do the
emcee and everybody would laugh because he didn *t know how
to talk, you know.
Q. That was the Vegas Club?
A. Yes? he had a band and as far as I can recall, I
don't believe he had any strip tease. I *m almost positive
he didn *t.
Q. How successful was the Vegas Club?
A. He said it was doing all right. I wouldn't have
any way of knowing. It was full all the time.
Q. Did he ever ask you for money?
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A. No .
Q. Do you remember if he ever got money from any
other individuals?
A. No .
Q. Do you remember that he had any business partners?
A. No, I don't think he did, to tell you the truth.
No, I'm sure he didn't
Q. Do you r^ember if he ever got in any financial
troviJle?
A* What, sir?
Q. in financial trouble.
A. No, sir, I don't think he ever did as long as
I knew him, he didn't. At least he never said anything
about it
Q. Did Jack Ruby have problems with his income taxes?
A. Not that I know of. I didn't know him that well
to know all his business, you know, his personal business.
He could have had anything and I wouldn't know it.
Q. Did he ever propose any business deals with you?
A. Never, never
Q. Do you know any people who were particularly good
friends with Jack Ruby?
A. Well, I know two real good friends of his. One
fellow named Jake Rif kin, he's dead. He died a year or so
ago. And another one named Mark Panitz, P-a-n-i-t-z. They
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were two of his close friends.
Q. What did Jake Rifkin do for a living?
A. He was a gambler.
Q. Where did he gamble?
A. Around Memphis, around, let's see if he ever dealt
any gambling houses, yes, he has dealt in gambling houses,
I don’t recall which one, around Memphis years and years
ago, many years ago.
Q. HOW did Jack Ruby get to know him?
A. trough me. 'Riey were friends of mine.
Q. Did Jake Rifkin gamble in Dallas?
A. I think he worked around Dallas, I believe dealing
around there some.
Q. DO you know who he worked for?
A. He might have come out and wrked for me a couple
of times up at the Top of the Hill, a few times.
Q. During what period of time did he get to be good
friends with Jack Ruby?
A. Did he get to be? I 'd say about the same time I
did. They were both my good friends.
Q. So that would have beei late '40 's or early '50's?
A. I'd have to say the early '50's. I'm pretty sure
it was early, it could have been the late '40 's, but I think
it was early '50's.
For how long a period of time was Jake Rifkin and
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Jack Ruby good friends?
A. Let me see, I *d say six or seven years, eight
years maybe.
Q. Why did they stop being good friends?
A. I don*t really knew. They were still good
friends as far as I know. i don't know. Jake left there.
Let me see, I think he went to Hot Springs. He used to go
to Hot Springs every year.
Q. Do you know —
A. (interrupting) And he could have worked over
there, too. I don't know.
Q. Who were some of the people Jake Rifkin gambled
with in Dallas?
A. I really wouldn't know. I wouldn't know, differ-
ent gamblers. I wouldn't know.
Q. What type of gambling would he have been involved
in?
A. Oh, hell, he'd do anything, shoot dice, bet on
horses, baseball games, football games. He'd bet on any-
thing .
Q. Did jack Ruby have any other friends who were in-
volved in gambling?
A. I can't think of any, no. But these two fellows,
they were friends of his.
Q. How did you know they were good *friends of his?
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A. !Riey would be at ray apartraent and we would
swim and they would be there all the time.
Q. I believe you stated thac Jack Ruby thought very
highly of you?
A. He did. On account of roe doing him so many favors
I guess. Like I told you about the union« straightened
that out, Bill Miller. And he called roe later and said,
what kind of people are you having roe call, calling me.
Well, what the hell, pardon me, I didn't knm that Jack
Ruby was going to do what he did. There wasn't any way in
the world I would knm that. I thought he was harmelss.
And I still think that he did it I thought he thought it
would make him a big man, that 's all I can say. Ax^ I've
told everybody that. And that's exactly the reason I think
he did it. He thought it would make him a martyr or some-
thing.
Q. Was jack Ruby very interested in money for what
it could buy for him?
A. I didn't get that, sir.
Q. Was Jack Ruby very interested in money for what it
could buy for him?
A. He didn't seem to be, no, he really didn't. When
I was around him, he seemed to b e perfectly happy with his
place.
Q. You 're saying he was much more interested in be-
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coming a big man around town?
A. That*8 what I think, yes. I really think that,
in the entertainment field.
Q. Did he see you as a big man in Dallas?
A. I guess he might have thought that.
Q. Why would he have thought that?
A. I don't know why he thought ftiat. He evidently
did think that the way he hung around. I always conducted
myself in the proper manner.
Q. Who were some of the influential people in Dallas
that you had good connections with?
A. That I had good connections with? I didn't have
any good connections with any of the big legitimate peo|>le.
I did know a man named Sidney Fruhman. We is ed to play gin
at his house a lot of Sundays. That was about the extent
of my running with.the legitimate people, if you know what
I mean.
Q. Did you say with illegitimate or with legitimate?
A. Legitimate, with legitimate people, I moan
business people.
Q. How do you spell his last name?
A. F-r-u-h-m-a-n .
He's dead, too.
Q. What was his occupation?
A. He had a chain of hat stores named Rhelle, Rhelle
35-379 0 - 79-4
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Hat Stores. I don't know if they're still in operation.
I'm sure they are.
Q. Did Jack Ruby frequent the Top of the Hill Club?
A. No, I think the Top of the Hill Club was closed
when I met Jack Ruby. I'm pretty sure, I'm positive it
was, almost positive.
Q. Did any gambling go on at the Top of the Hill Club?
A. Yes .
Q. And that was the dice and the cards that you spoke
of before?
A. We had a roulette wheel or two and dice games,
maybe three, and one twenty-one game.
Q. Did Jack Ruby frequent the Cellar Cliib in Fort
worth?
A. The Steller Club, I never heard of it.
Q. The Cellar Club.
A. Costello?
Q. Cellar, C-e-l-l-a-r.
A. I never heard of it.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Pat or Fay Kirkwood?
A. Yes, that's where I was at in Fort Worth. Don't
get them mixed up. One of them is the son and one is the
old man. The old man that I was with was ramed W. C. Kirk-
wood. Pat is kind of a hippie type young fellow. He was
young then. He's not young now.
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Q. Did Jack Ruby know W. C. Kirkwood?
A. Just to say hello to him. He may have been out
there maybe once or twice.
Q. What was the name — was it a cliib that Mr. Kirkwood
ran?
A. It was a home. We were sneaking gambling is
what we was doing.
Q. Over what time period was there gambling in Mr.
Kirkwwood*s home?
A. I *d have to say, I believe from *51 to '* 53 , I *m
not sure. While I was there, he had some gambling there
before. But when I was there *51 to * 53 , I *m not positive
but I think so.
Q. And you say you think Jack Ruby may have gone
there once or twice?
A. That*8 all.
Q. Did Jack Ruby gamble there?
A. No, he wouldn't gamble. I told you he wouldn't
bet anything, on anything.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Pat Kirkwood?
A. No, I *ra sure he didn't.
Q. What occupation was Pat Kirkwood in?
A. Last I heard of Pat Kirkwood, he had a hippie,
we call it a joint, a hippie joint where they lay on the
floor on pads. I never was in it but I heard about it.
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He grew a beard and long hair and prior to that he had been
a race driver but he opened this place and kind of went, I
don't know, it was during that hippie period, wasn't it,
auround the *50 's .
What time period did Pat Kirkwood operate that
place?
A. Pat Kirkwood, I just don't know. Let me see, I
left there in *53. I *d say he must have started around *56,
I believe. I'm not positive, though. I couldn't say for
sure.
Q. What was the name of Pat Kirkwood's place?
A. I don't know. I just heard about it.
Q. Where was it located?
A. It was in Fort Worth in the city, I think.
Q. Now, you said Pat was W. C. Kirkwood's son?
A. His son, that's right.
Q- Do you know where he is now?
A. I have no idea.
Q. When was the last time you had communication with
Pat Kirkwood?
A. I haven't had communication with Pat Kirkwood, I
haven't heard from Pat Kirkwood in years, even thought about
him. I've seen his father. His father's been out here maybe
once or twice. He's half blind.
Q. Where does W. C. Kirkwood live now?
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A. I'm sure he still lives at the same place. He's
been ther e many, many years.
Q. Where is that?
A. 2222 Jacksborough Highway.
Q. In what town?
A. Fort Worth.
Q. You were describing the place that Pat Kirkwood
ran as having pads on the floor.
A. I just had people telling me about it. I was
never in there, don't even know what street it was on and
where it was at. But I heard people laughing about it
and talking about it
Q. Basically they were talking about the fact that
he had sexual activity going on in his place?
A. No, they were just talking about what a bunch of
crummy looking people patronized it, you know. At that
time everybody was growing a beard. It was the start of the
hippie period.
Q. What were the pads on the floor for?
A. I don't know, to sit on, I guess. I mean that's
hearsay to me. I haven't been there so I couldn't tell you
for sure. But I *m sure that you could find out very easy.
Q. Did you know a Fay Kirkwood?
A. That was W. C. 's wife, a very nice lady. She had
a dancing horse and she'd ride in rodeos every once in a
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while at that time.
Q. Did she ever run a club?
A. No; she was strictly a rodeo performer.
Q. You stated previously that you didn^t taow any
times when Jack Ruby was in particular financial trouble.
Were there any times When he was particularly successful
financially?
A. No, I think he just made a certain amount of
money. I have no idea what he made but he couldn't have
made too much money. He made a comfortable living. It
was nothing to brag about
Q. Would you describe him as a free spender or was
he frugal?
A. I *d have to say he was frugal. He wasn't a free
spender.
Q. Are there any incidents you can describe that
demonstrate that he was frugal?
A. Like I»d go out to eat with him and he'd never
offer to pay a check. That's one way he was frugal. That's
the only way I would know he was frugal . I never saw him
throwing any money away
Q. Did you and jack Ruby ever go out for drinks to-
gether and he offered to pay?
A. No.
Q. Did Jack Ruby drink?
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A. I don't J<ac)c Ruby even drank, to tell you the
truth. I never did see him take a drink.
Q. Did you ever travel outside of Dallas with J^ck
Ruby?
A. No, not that I know of
Q. Do you know of Jack Ruby traveling outside of
Dallas other than the Cuba trip?
A. The only trip I know is ric|ht there. The FBI
asked me if he had been out here. He's never been out here
as far as I know.
Q. During the time that you knew Jack Ruby, did he
ever travel to Chicago?
A. I don't recall him ever going to Chicago. I've
heard him talk about Chicago. I think he was from Chicago.
I'd have to say he was. I don't recall him ever going any-
where.
Q. What do you recall Jack R\i?y saying about Chicago?
A. Nothing. That he ccme up in a poor neighborhood
and how rough it was for him. He had a tough young life.
That 's about it.
Q. Do you recall him talking about his family living
in Chicago?
A. I think his family lived in Dallas. His sister
out there and he always said she was sick or something. He
had a brother. I think he had two brothers. One of them
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was a little, I don't know, he said he was sick.
Q. He said who was sick?
A. The brother, the. brother and sister both he said
were a little sick some way, I don't know.
Q. Was he talking about them being physically ill?
A. He just said they were sick.
Q. Did you ever meet any of Jack Ruby's brothers or
sisters?
A. I want to tell you something that happened here
about, it's been about four months ago. I don't think I
ever saw any one of his faunily in Dallas. I might have
seen his sister.
Q. His sister was Eva Grant.
A. Eva Grant, yea, that's the one I'm talking ^out.
I think I saw her in a restaurant one night with him and I
didn't even go, I went to the counter to keep from going
around them. He's got a brother named Earl Ruby. He was
out here about four months ago and he came by to see me.
I was working. Be came in the pit. We call it the pit, ywi
know. He said, ”Mr . McWillie?" I said, "Yes.” He said,
"l *m Earl Ruby." Well, I like to fell down.
I said, "Earl Ruby?" I said, "What do you want,
Earl?" Well, "l just want to say hello to you." I've
never seen him in ray life before. I said, “What are you
doing out hare?" He said, "We *re going to make a docu-
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mentary", nbc or one of the others. I said, "Listen,
will you do me a favor? Would you just get on out of
here and get away from me. I've got enough problems about
your brother already uncalled for." I don't know if he
got mad or not but he left. He was there about five
minutes. That's the first time I had ever laid eyes on
him .
Didn't he have two brothers?
Q. Yes, he had a brother named Sam. Did you ever
meet Sam Ruby?
A. No, I didn't meet him. Have you ever seen any
of them? It seemed like he had a little bitty skinny
brother. What the hell was his name? But I didn't meet
him anyway. I've seen him. But this Earl, I had never laid
eyes on him. And when he came into the pit and sayd, "l 'm
Earl Ruby", well, I like to fell out. I didn't want to see
any Rubys any more.
Q. Did Jack Ruby ever travel to New Orleans?
A. To New Orleans? If he did, he traveled after I
left Dallas. I don't ever recall Jack Ruby ever leaving
Dallas the whole time I knew him.
Q. Do you know whether or not Jack Ruby knew Carlos
or Vincent Marcello?
A. Is that the fellow in New Orleans? I wouldn't
think so, no. I wouldn't think he'd know him.
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Q. Did you know Carlos or Vincent Marcello?
A. No, sir, I sure don't.
Q. Never met them?
A. Never met them in my life.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know a man named Pete Guarisco?
A. Who?
Q. Pete Guarisco.
A. Not that I know of.
Q. Did you know Pete Guarisco?
A. No, never heard of him.
Q. Did Jack Ruby travel to Shreveport, Louisiana?
A, Not that I know of.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Elizabeth AnneMatthews?
A. Elizabeth Anne who?
Q. Matthews.
A. Elizabeth Anne, no. I mean I don't know whether
he knew them or not. Be could have known all of than, I
don't know, but I don't think he did.
Q. Do you know R. D. Matthews?
A. Oh , yes .
Q. Did you know his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Anne
Matthews?
A. No; I met her just I think one time.
Q. Do you recall when you met her?
A. I met her at the Horseshoe, I think.
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Q. was she married to R. D. Matthews at the time?
A. I really wouldn't know. I'm sure this is the
lady he's married to now. I don't know. i didn't know
R.D. too well, I mean not intimately, do you know what I
mean. He worked there a while.
Q. Do you recall when Jack Ruby came from Chicago
to Dallas?
A. I have no idea.
Q. Do you know how long after he came to Dallas you
met him?
A. No, I don't have any idea. The first time I ever
saw him in my life was like I told* you sitting there with
that hat on, and it just attracted my attention and I kept
looking at this fellow.
Q. Does it refresh your memory to know that Jack Ruby
came to Dallas around 1947?
A. No, I wouldn't know when he came there because I
didn't know him, hadn't heard of him.
Q. What is your best recollection as to when you met
Jack Ruby?
A. I'd say the first part of the '50's because I
think I was in Fort Worth. I either went over there in
'51 to '53 or '53 to '56. I don't recall ttie exact dates.
I met him while I was at the Four Duces.
Q- Prior to jack Ruby's arrival in Dallas in 1947,
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What was the status of gambling in the Dallas area?
A. I don't understand what you mean, the status.
Q. What kinds of gambling was going on in the Dallas
area in the time, say, 1945 to 1947?
A. Well, there were a few crap games and a few horse
books is all I knew of.
Q. Was there any betting on sporting events?
A. Not that I know of. I never bet on than myself.
It could have been, i don't know.
Q. Who was involved in this gzunbling that you de-
scribed in 1945 to 1947?
A. In Dallas?
Q. In the Dallas area, Dallas-Fort Worth area.
A. I don't really know. i knew a fellow named
Scarborough, Red Scarborough, and like I said. Miller and
Earl Dalton.
Q. How much numbers activity was there in Dallas?
A. I have no idea about the numbers. At the time
I was a dice dealer when I was in Dallas.
Q. Did you k^iOw of any numbers activity in Dallas?
A. No, sir, I wouldn't have any way of lowing that
because —
Q. (Interrupting) Were you aware of Benny Binion's
numbers operation in Dallas prior to 1947?
A. No.
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Q. Did you know Benny Binion at that time?
A. Know him to sem him.
Q. You knew him to see him at that time?
A. Just to see him.
Q. Did you know that Ivy Miller and Red Scarborough
worked for Benny Binion in a numbers operation?
A. No , I didn *t .
Q. What gambling activity did you know that Ivy
Miller and Red Scarborough were involved in?
A. They were involved in the Southland Hotel and
could have been involved in the place where I worked. Blue
Bonnet, and they were involved in the Top of the Hill.
Q. What gambling activity was Benny Binion involved
in at that time?
A. I have no idea.
Q. Was Benny Binion involved in any gambling at that
time?
A. I don't know. There's no way I'd know,
Q. Did you ever see Benny Binion gamble?
A. Ever see him gamble, no, never did ,
Q. Did you know johnny Avon?
A. Johnny Avon, not well. He had had a gambling
place around there before I ever got there. He wasn't in
gambling when I was there.
Q. Did you know Berle Cheek?
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A. Who?
Q. Berle Cheek,
A. Berle Cheek, yes, I knew him, too. He had been
in gambling prior to my going to Dallas.
Q. What kind of gambling was he involved in?
A. I don't really know but I knew he was a gambler.
Q. Was he involved in gambling while you were there?
A. So. Let me see, wait a minute now. We borrowed
some money from Berle Cheek, I think, while I was at the
Top of the Hill, I don't know, $10,000 or something.
Q. When you say we, you mean you and Fred Browning?
A. Me and Kirkwood at the Four Duces.
Q. You and w, C. Kirkwood?
A. Yes.
in two or three days we gave it back to him
because we didn't want his money.
Q. Was there any loan sharking activity going on
in the Dallas area at that time?
A. Not that I know of.
Q. Did you know Benny Bickers?
A. Yes, very well.
Q. What gambling activity was Mr. Bickers involved
in?
A. I don't knew. i really don*t)fiow what he was in-
volved in.
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Q. Did you know that he worked with Benny Binion in
a numibers activity in that area?
A. No.
Q. Did you know Ben Whittaker?
A. Very well.
Q. What kind of gambling activity was Mr. Whittaker
involved in?
A. Mr. /Aiittaker had race horses and all he did, that
I knew of, was bet on his own horses, go to the track, a
very nice man.
Q. Did he run a gambling operation?
A. Not that I know of. He didn't run one while I
was there.
Q. What kind of galling was Fred Browning involved
in?
A. He was involved in the Top of the Hill Terrace.
Q. Was he involved in any other gambling?
A. No, he had the Top of the Hill for years.
Q. Did he ever work with Benny Binion in gambling?
A. Fred Browning?
Q. Fred Browning.
A. Not that I know of.
Q. Did Jhck Ruby know Benny Binion?
A. No.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Ivy Miller?
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A. No.
Q. would Jack Ruby have known of Benny Binion?
A. I don*t think so. I wouldn*t know why he would
have known him.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know johnny Avon?
A. No.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Berle Cheek?
A. No» not that I know of. I have to say not that I
know of because I'm positive he didn't.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Red Scarborough?
A. No.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Benny Bickers?
A. I don't think so.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Ben Whittaker?
A. No.
Q, Did Jack Ruby know Fred Browning?
A. I think we were closed. I don’t believe he did
know Fred Browning. We were closed when I net Jack, I'm
positive of it.
Q. HOW organized was gambling in the Dallas area?
A. I really don't know. There's no way I'd knew
how it was organized.
Q. Was Dallas an open or a closed city?
A. It had a few crap games in it 1 'don't know if
you'd call that open or closed or whatever it was. But it
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had a few crap games like more cities in the United States
at that time.
Q. Did the individual who was running a p 2 u:ticular
crap game have to get anyone else 's permission to do it?
A. Have to do what, sir?
Q. Get anyone else's permission.
A. I really don't know. 1 was just working there.
Q. When you ran your gambling places in the Dallas
area, did you have to pay any money to anyone?
A. NO, sir, we were sneaking as 1 told you a while
ago .
Q. you were what?
A. We were sneaking, what we call sneaking. 1 don't
know how to explain it. We were doing it against the law
I guess you'd call it.
Q. Did any of these secret gambling operations have
troubles with the police?
A. Yes, they got raided every once in a while, Ohe
Rangers would raid them. Hell, the sheriff would raid them
a lot of times.
Q. When you say the Rangers, you mean the Texas
Rangers?
A. yes .
Q. Did anyone ever have to pay off the police?
A. Not that I know of. I wasn't in a position to
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know that but I wouldn't think so. I really don't know
about that because I wasn't involved in it
Q. Did anyone have to pay off the proeecuter?
A. I wouldn't think so.
Q. Were you aware of a crackdown on gambling in the
Dallas area in 1947 when a new prosecuter came into office?
A. Yes, there was a crackdown, sure was. I don't
know if it was the prosecuter.
Q. Would that have been when Steve Guthrie became the
sheriff?
A. I really don't recall.
Q. What effect did this crackdown have on gambling?
How successful was the crackdown?
A. There just wasn't any more gambling. I thought it
was Kefauver that did it. I'm not sure. What time was
Kefauver, '58? Was it that late, '58?
MR. WOU; Early '50's.
MR. PURDY: Kefauver was early '50's.
A. As I understand that was the crackdown in gambling
everywhere.
BY MR, PURDY:
Q. But you recall a crackdown in Dallas in 1947
either with the new sheriff or when Will Wilson came in?
A. I remanber we got closed up, we got raided around
Dallas .
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Q. Did this crackdown cause anyone to leave Dallas?
A. I *ni sure all the dealers left.
Q. Do you recall people leaving Dallas and going to
Las Vegas around 1947?
A. A number of them, yes, a number of people came
out here. Most everybody came out here.
Q. Do you remember Benny Binion leaving at that
time?
A. Yes .
Q. Who else do you remenber left at that time?
A. I don't know if it was at that time or not, but
I remmnber Benny Binion left there. Who else left there?
Let me see, a fellow named Jess Zilliack.
Q. How do you spell his name?
A. 1 don't know, Zilliack.
Q. Who else left Dallas sd went to Vegas, do you
remonber ?
A. Fred Browning even came oct here but he didn 't
come out here to do business. He brought race horses
out here. He had a track out here about that time. There's
a lot of people. Everybody came out here over the years
because there wasn't any place to gamble but here
Q. After the crackdown on gambling in the Dallas area,
could you please describe for us how much gambling went on
in ^e Dallas area between 1947 and, say, 1958 when you last
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had contact with Jack Ruby in Dallas?
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A. Well, they had stag parties. We did have stag
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parties for a while where they run them in the country
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clubs. That was the extent of the gambling around Dallas.
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Q. What type of gamblinog went on at these stag
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parties?
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A. Dice games.
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Q. How often were they held?
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A. Maybe once a month, most every two months.
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Q. Did Jack R\±>y ever go to any of those stag
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A. Never
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Q. Did you ever go to them?
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A. Sure, I went to them.
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Q. If Jack Ruby had gone to them, would you have
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known about it?
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A. oh, yes, I would have seen him. If you saw him
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once, you'd never forget him with the hat on.
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Q. If Jack Ruby had gone to the stag parties, would
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A. Yes, I wouldn't have known him, but I would have
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seen him, I would have remenfcered him because I do remember
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Q. Was there any link between Dallas and Las Vegas
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in terms of gambling between, say, '47 and 1960?
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A. I *d have to say no,
Q. Did you know Harry Urban?
A. Didn't know him intimately I knew him to speak
to him.
Q. Did you know he was a partner of Benny Binion?
A. No .
Q. Was Harry Urban involved in any gambling in
the Dallas area?
A. I don't think so.
Q. Were you familiar --go ahead.
A. I forgot what I was going to say,
Q. Which clubs were the stag parties held in?
A. ^e stag party was held at the, let's see, it was
the country club out on, there was one downtown. I can't
think of the name. The Main Street Club or something. It
was at the corner of Field and Main, We held them there.
I mean I ran them a pretty good while, maybe six or seven
times There was a country club out on the, kind of a
freeway there. *niey changed the name of it since then. l
don't recall the name of it. Then there was one named the
Cipango Club.
Q. Who ran the operation at the Cipango Club?
A. Ivy Miller and Earl Dalton. Scarborough va a dead.
Q, During what time period did they run that?
A, Like I said, I don't recall. I think it was the
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late *40 's maybe, I don't know.
Q. Did they run the Cipango Club at all during the
•50*8?
A. The club is still there, I think, but not gambling.
Q. Did they have any of the stag parties at the
Cipango Club during the '50 *s?
A. That's what they call stag parties but they let
their wives come, too. they just called it stag parties.
Q. Did that go on during the '50*8?
A. No, it stopped, I *d say, in the late *40 *s.
There wasn't too many out there, maybe five or six.
Q. Who ran the operation in the country club when
they had the stag parties?
A. Who ran the gambling? i ran it myself but the same
two people I mentioned, Scarborough and Miller.
Q. You had said Datton and Miller?
A. I meant Dalton and Millar. Scarborough was
dead
Q. Did you also run the operation at the Cipango Club
with them?
A. Yes, I ran the stags for them,
Q. And did you also rxin the operation at the club on
Main Street with them?
A. Gambling, yes.
Q. Were any of the stag parties held during the
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1950*s?
A. No, I'd have to say no, I'm not for sure, but
I *d have to say no for sure.
Q* What kind of geunbling went on at the stag parties?
A. Just dice games.
Q. I believe previously in response to my question
about geunbling between 1947 and 1958, you said stag parties
were held. Are you now changing that and saying that they
didn't go on in the *50*s?
A. I don't recall, to tell you the truth. It could
have gone on in maybe '51. I don't Icnow for sure. There's
no way I can resnember. But I told you that I did run them
for them. That's all I can tell you. I don't know what
years exactly. The last yea^rs I don't know, I just don't
know. It could be and it could not be, I just don't know.
Q. Did any gambling go on in Dallas in the 1950 *s?
A. No.
Q. was there any gambling in private homes in the
•50's?
A. There could have been„ I don't know about that.
Q. You left for Cuba, you said, in 1958?
A. '58.
Q. So if there was no gambling in the '50*s, that
means that —
A. (interrupting) it was in the *50 's in Fort
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* Worth. I told you that I was running this place sneaking
“ over in Fort Worth.
^ Q. Was Jack Ruby involved in any gambling in the
^ 1950's?
A. He was involved in nothing in the way of gambling,
no way.
Q. Were you interviewed by the FBI in Las Vegas on
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November 25, 1963?
A. Yes, sir. I don*t know if it was the exact d«:fce
or not. They like to ran me crazy. I *d be working and they
would call me out of the pit to talk to them. I finally
asked them, I said, "Please come out to my home and let me
talk to you." I was interviewed by them many times.
Q. Did you tell the FBI on November 25, 1963, that
Jack Ruby had been involved in gambling as a player?
A. No, I did not because he never had been involved
in gambling as a player. Like I say, jack Ruby wouldn't
bet 25 cents on anything.
Q. the FBI report dated November 27, 1963, which is
a report of your interview with the FBI on NovAber 25, 1963,
which was conducted in Las Vegas, Nevada, by special agents
Stevens and Salisbury, that report says that you stated, the
report says, '*He stated he does not know Ruby to have ever
been involved in any bookie activity or in any gambling of
any nature other than as a player."
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A. He never played in his life. I never saw him
play.
Q. Does that accurately reflect what you told the
FBI on November 25, 1963, that Ruby was involved as a player?
A. No, sir, I didn't tell them that. I did not tell
them that. I have never seen Ruby gamble on anything.
And, incidentally, when i went to Arruba, the day
I left, the FBI went to my mother, went to my sisters, my
brothers, and Jaclc Ruby had happened to be visiting me in
my ^rtinent when my mother and sister were visiting me, and
they thought he was the finest man in the world and that 's
what my mother told the FBI, I'm sure. So I asked Mr.
Stevens, I said, ''if you don't mind, my sister has been with
the Veterans Hospital for many years and she's the head
nurse there in the operating room, charge of the operating
room”, I gave him a number at home, and I said, "if you
will call her after 5:30, she'll invite yoa out to the
house and talk to you." Well, they went up there and like
to scared her to death.
So the day I went to Arruba, Mr. Stevens, I'm glad
to remember that name, he came out to the house and told my
wife I had been cleared of any wrongdoing and my wife asked
him, “well, what's he been cleared of, he hasn't done any-
thing." "just known this nut", which it turns out he was.
X didn't know he was that nutty.
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Q. When was that that your family members met Jack
Ruby?
A. I don't know, it was in the '50's. It was in the
'50 'a. I can only recall the year. I'm sure they have a
record of it, my mother and my sister both. He had a
habit of, if he met anyone, like he'd meet you, he'd want
to know your name, he'd want to know y^ur address, what your
birthday was, and he would send you a birthday card, a
Christaias card. I don't know why he did that but that was
a habit he had.
Q. When was it that you went to Arruba?
A. Arruba in '64, I bdieve.
Q. was it just a coincidence that the FBI came to you
the day you were leaving for Arruba?
A. It was after I went to Arruba and Mr. Stevens told
■y wife that I had been cleared of anything. I don't know
what the devil he was talking about.
Q. Do you know any oilmen in Dallas, the Dallas area?
A. A lot of oilmen played at the Top of the Hill,
quite a few.
Q. Who were some of those oilmen?
A. Hell, I don't recall the names any more. Let me
see, there was a fellow named Carraway, he was an oilman,
Sid R chardson would come out there, he didn't do much
playing. I don't think he played at all. Billy Byers, a
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man named Billy Byers, he played out there. Big oilmen,
H. L. Hunt, he played out there.
Q. Hov often did H. L. Hunt gamble out there?
A. Not very often. He would go upstairs and eat.
We gave away the food. And he would take 12 people up
there and wouldn't tip the waiter but he would gamble, he
did gamble.
Q. Was jach Ruby ever there when any oilmen were
there?
A. No, I never knew Jack Ruby when the Top of the
Bill was open. I'm almost positive that I met Jack Ruby
after it was closed.
Q. Did you know Harry Hall?
A. I knew a dealer years and years ago by the name
of Harry Hall. Hell, he's been dead 30, 40 years.
Q. Be also went by the name Barry Sinclair, Jr.
A. No.
Q. Or Harry Haler, H-a-l-e-r?
A. NO.
Q. Regarding Mr. Bill Byers, do you recall an inci-
dent when a nun^er of people considered robbing him?
A. No, I didn't know he ever got robbed. He lived
in Tyler, Texas. He didn't live in Dallas.
Q. Did jack Ruby know H. L. Bunt?
A. No, I'm positive he didn't.
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Q. Did Jack Ruby know Bill Byers?
A. No, he never knew any of those people that I *m
talking about.
Q. Did Dick Anconi ever come to the Top of the Hill
Club?
A. No, I knew Dick Anconi. Dick Anconi was a big
oilnain. He&ed a number of years ago.
Q. Did jack Ruby know hin?
A. No.
Q. Were you familiar with the Petroleum Club?
A. No, I know where it was but you couldn't go in
there \inless you were an oilman.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Sid Richardson?
A. No.
Q. Did jack Ruby know Dewey Groom?
A. Who?
Q. Dewey Groom.
A. How do you spell it?
Q. C-r-o-o-m.
A. I don't know. I don't know who he knew. I've
never heard of him.
Q. You've never heard of Groom?
A. No.
Q. Do you know Marty Field?
A. Marty who?
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Q. Marty Field.
He used to work at the Sanda a few year a ago,
a lao uaed to work in Cuba, alao went by the name of Marty
Schwartz when he was a fighter.
A. No, I don't think I knew him.
Q. Did jack Ruby know Joe Civello?
A. Joe Civello, I don't think he did.
Q. Did you knew Joe Civello?
A. I knew him, yea. I didn't know him intimately,
but I knew him to apeak to him.
Q. What did Joe Civello do for a living?
A. i have no idea. He had a whiskey store, that's
where I met him, in a whiskey store.
Q. Did he ever gamble, to your knowledge?
A, Not to my knowledge.
Q. Did he ever go to any of your clubs?
A. No, never did.
Q. Did jack Ruby know Joe or Sam Campiai?
A. I'm sure he did, yes. Hiey have a restaurant
there.
Q. What restaurant did they run?
A. Egypt ia n Lounge .
Q. Were you ever with Jack Ruby when he was with
either of the Campisis?
A. I could have eaten out there with Jack Ruby but
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that was all.
Q. There might have been a time when you all ate
together?
A. They would come over and say hello probably or
aomething like that. They were pretty good hosts.
Q. Do you recall having dinner with Jack Ruby and the
Campisis in 1954 or '55?
A. I don't recall it but it's possible.
Q. Were you ever present with either of the
Campisis when jack Riiby was present when business deals were
discussed?
A. No, they would have no business dealings with
jack Ruby .
Q. Do you know whether or not the Campisis ever went
to Ruby's club?
A. Everybody went to Ruby's club to see those hippies.
1 don't know that they did, but 1 'd have to say they had
been.
Q. Were the Campisis ever involved in gambling?
A. Not that 1 know of.
Q. Did they ever come to your club?
A. No.
Q. Did you know Johnnie Grizzaffi?
A. No, not that I recall him. I don't recall knowing
him. What did he do?
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Q. Johnnie Grizzaffi was an associate of Lois Green
and Beeny Binion.
A. No.
Q. Did you )cnow Sidney Siedband?
A. Who?
Q. Sidney Siedband, S-i-e-d-b-a-n-d .
A. No .
Q. Did you )cnow Jaclc Todd?
A. Todd, yes, I knew J^clc Todd.
Q. What did Jaclc Todd do?
A. jaclc Todd, to tell you the truth, I don *t know
what jack Todd did. He was in Cuba, too.
Q. What did Jack Todd do in Cuba?
A. Just came over there visiting.
Q. Did he see you when he was in Cuba?
A. I saw him once or twice, yes.
Q. When was that that he visited Cuba?
A. I don»t know. I don»t have any idea.
Q. Would that have been the late *50 *s?
A. It had to be the late *50*s.
Q. Was Jack Ruby there at the time jack Todd was
there?
A. I don't think he was. I *m positive he wasn't,
can't say for sure but I'm positive he wasn't.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Jack Todd?
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A, I'm cure he did. I'm not positive he did but I
would say he did. Everybody who went to that club knew
Jack Ruby.
Q. Was jack Todd a safe cracker?
A. I don't really know. i wouldn't have any way of
knowing .
Q. Did jack Todd gamble?
A. I don't recall ever seeing him gamble.
Q. Did he have any business dealings with you?
A. Wot any with me« no.
Q. Do you know anyone he had business dealings with?
A.
Q. Are you familiar with Sue's used Car Lot?
A. Whose?
Q. Sue's Used Car Lot.
A. What city is that in?
Q. In the Dallas area?
A. No, never been around a car lot in my life.
Q. Do you know that jack Ruby and Jack Todd often
frequented Sue's used Car Lot?
A. No, I didn't.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Izzy Miller?
A. It's possible. They're both Jewish, it's possible.
Q. Did you know Izsy Miller?
A. Yes .
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Q. What did he do for a living?
A. I don *t know what he did. He was a crap dealer
for avhile.
Q. Did he ever gamble at your club?
A. NO .
Q. Did Jack Ruby know John Eli Stone?
A. Who?
Q. Johnny Eli Stone.
A. Not that I know of.
Q. Do you know him?
A. I wouldn't know. I don't know who he knew. But
I wouldn't think so. I never heard of him.
Q. You never heard of Johnny Eli Stone?
A. How do you spell the last name?
Q. S-t-o-n-e.
A, I know Johnny Stone, yes, but Jack Ruby would
never know johnny Stone. Johnny Stone, when I knew him,
ran a bar up on, called it the Turf Bar.
Q. Was there any gambling at the Turf Bar?
A. Not that I ever saw.
Q. Do you know why Jack Ruby moved to Dallas?
A. I have no idea ,
Q. Did you and jack Ruby ever discuss why he came to
Dallas?
A. No, never.
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Q. You said before that jac)c Ruby discussed Chicago
with you generally.
A. He said he came up in Chicago and he came up in
a poor neighborhood and he would tal)c sbout what a rough
time he had when he was a kid anlthat's the extent of his
talk about Chicago.
Q. Did he ever discuss anyone he grew up with?
A. No.
Q. Did he ever discuss any people he still knew in
Chicago?
A. No , never .
Q. Do you know if jack R\iby knew Barney Baker?
A« Barney Baker? Barney Baker, no.
Q. Did you know Mr. Baker?
A. No, I did not.
Q- Did Jack Ruby know Lenny Patrick?
A. Lenny Patrick, I have no idea. Be could have. I
don't even know who Lenny Patrick was myself.
Q. Did jack Ruby know Dave Yaras?
A. I don*t know. i don't think so.
Q. Did you know Dave Yaras?
A. I knew whohe was.
Q. Had you ever met him?
A. I don't think so. 1 knew his brother. Be had a
brother named Sam Yaras. I don't think I ever met Dave.
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IB his name Dave? Is that the name? I don^t think I ever
met him. I met his brother. His brother had slot machines.
He was a slot machine man, repaired slot machines.
Q. Where did he repair slot machines?
A. Right in his building.
Q. What city was that in?
A. I believe it was Field Street, I *m not sure. I
wouldn't say for sure.
Q. What city was that in?
A. Da 1 la s .
in fact, his brother died in Dallas.
Q. Do you remember when Sam Yaras came to Dallas?
A. Who?
Q. Do you know when Sam Yaras came to Dallas?
A. I have no idea .
Q. Do you know if Jack Ruby knew Sam Yaras?
A. No, he didn*t know him.
Q. Did jack Ruby know Paul Dorfman?
A. I have no idea. I don't know who Paul Dorfman is.
Q. Did jack Ruby know Lawrence Meyers?
A, Lawrence who?
Q. Meyers.
A. I don't know. I don't know him.
Q. Did aiyone from outside of Dallas consider moving
to Dallas to get into gambling operations?
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A. I don *t know. i really don*t know.
Q. Did you ever hear of outside gamblers wanting to
come into Dal las?
A. No; it*s a possibility that it would happen and I
wouldn*t know anything about it because it wasn*t any of my |
business. |
Q. Was jack Ruby involved in any prostitution related |
activities? |
A. Prostitution?
Q. Related activities.
A. No .
Q. Were any of his employees involved in prostitu-
tion?
A. Not that I know of, no. I don *t know about the
Carousel, that*s a different proposition. i don*t know about
that. I don*t think he would be, no.
Q. Was it coomnon in Dallas for club employees to be
involved in prostitution?
A, No, I don't think so. I never heard of it.
Q. Was there much prostitution in Dallas?
A. Not too much, by George, there wasn't too much.
Q. Where was the prostitution that there was?
A. I don't know where it was,
Q. Did it operate out of hotels?
A. It*s a possibility they worked out of hotels.
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Q. Did you know a woman named Helen Alfonae Roan?
A. Helen Alfonse what?
Q. Roan, R-o-a-n.
A. Not that I recall, no.
Q. Do you know if Jack Ruby had close relations with
any of his employees?
A. No, I don*t.
Q. Do you know whether or not there was any narcotics
activity in the Dallas arM?
A. Never heard of it, never.
Q. Did you know Paul Rowland Jones?
A. No, I didn't know of him. I've read about him.
It seemed like he got into some trouble in Mexico. It seemed
like when i read about him, he got into some kind of trouble
in Mexico. I never knew him.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know him?
A. No? I couldn't say for sure but I wouldn't think
so .
Q. Did jack Ruby know James or Bunny Breen, B-r-e-e-n?
A. I never heard of them. See, a lot of these f>eople
you're asking me if jack Ruby knew, he could have known
them and I didn't know it. But as far as I know, I didn't
know them myself.
Q. Was there any illegal gun sales in Dallas when
you were there?
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A. Mo, not that 1 know of.
Q. Was there any transportation of guns to or from
other places?
A. Hot that 1 know and 1 <m positive that there
wasn't.
Q. Did you know Robert Ray McKeown?
A. No, I never heard of him either. 1 read about
him in some of those articles about him but I never heard
o f him.
Q. You didn 't know if Jack Ruby knew him?
A. Ho. If he had, I think he would have told me if
he kn«i» of those people you said about. Re's that kind of
a fellow. I never heard of any of these people you're asking,
most of them.
Q. Did you know of a John Thomas Mason?
A. Ho, John Thomas Mason.
Q. Did jack Ruby know of him?
A. I don't believe so. Like I tell you, I don't know
who he knew. Be could have known several of those people
and I wouldn't know it, you know.
Q. Did you know Joseph Merola, M-e-r-o-l-a?
A. Ho.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know him?
A. I don't know.
Q. To your knowledge.
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A. I have to keep tolling you I don't knov %<ho jack
Ruby know, but I wouldn't think ao. Haybe ho did, I don't
know .
Q. You stated previously that you did not ask jack
Ruby for four guns in 19S47
A. I don't recall that, no. I've been asked that
several tijnes and I don't recall it.
Q. Does it refresh your recollection to know that
jack Rnby said that you requested four Cobras in 19597
A. No, it doesn't. The only gun I can rencBiber is
a gun he sent out here and I let it go back, didn't take
i t out of the—
Q* (Interrupting) Can you think of any reason you
would have wanted guns in 19597
A. Mo reason i would have wanted guns in *59, I was
in Cuba. I'd get myself killed if i had guns over there.
Q. You stated previously that, to your knowledge,
jack Ruby only owned one gxin7
A. One gun as far as I know. He could have cwned
two or three but I didn't know about it- There wouldn't
be any way I'd know it.
Q. Do you recall being interviewed by the FBI in
June of 1964 by special a^ts Hcpaul and Stevens in Las
Vegas7
A. I remaaber being interviewed by the FBI a Ibt
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of times. 1 don’t know the exact dates.
Q. Did you tell the FBI in xTune of 1964 that jack
Ruby kept a couple of guns at his residence although he was
not a gun collector?
A. If I did« I don’t recall that. The only gun I
ever saw that jack Ruby had was a gun thst he carried in a
sack, when he closed up at night, he'd take his gxin out of
his sack and put it in his pocket and go deposit his noney
and then put the gun in his glove coBipartment . That's all
I recall.
Q. If you told the FBI in June of 1964 that you had
seen a couple of old guns in Jack Ruby's residence, would
that have been the truth at that time?
A. That I saw a couple of old guns? It's a possibiIi<
ty that he had two guns. I don't remember, to tell you the
truth. But I do remember the gun that he always had on
him when he went out to his club.
Q. You mentioned earlier a couple of times when jack
Roby asked you for help. One was with reference to the
curfew problem and one was with reference to AGVA .
Did he ever call you for help on any other matter?
A. No, not a thing.
Q. Did you ever ask him for help on anything?
A. No .
Q. Why did jack Ruby think to call you long distance
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to ask about his probleats with AGVA 7
A. He was just like that. He would call me on most
any of his darn problems. Be was just like that.
Q. Did he call about any other problems?
A. 'Hiatus the only problem he had, I guess, was the
A6VA and Hiller, he got it taken care of that same day, I
belive. It must have been a minor thing or something.
Q. Did you have any previous contacts with AGVA that
would make him think that you could help him?
A. No, I don*t think he would know i had any con*
tacts. He just called me and asked me if I knew anyone that
knew the president of AGVA. It just happened that I did
know Miller and I called Miller to help him.
Q. Were you familiar at all with AGVA in Dallas?
A. Not at all.
Q. While you were there.
A. No.
Q. Did you know Vincent Lee?
A. Who?
Q. Vincent Lee who worked for AGVA in Dallas.
A. Vincent Lee, no, I didn*t.
Q. Did you know James Henry Dolan who worked for
AGVA in Dallas?
A. It seems like I met him. Did he work for AGVA?
Was that the union he worked for?
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Q. He di,d for a while.
A. He worked for some union. I didn't know what
union it was. I met him once or twice, I think.
Q. Do you know anything about his activities with the
union?
A. Nothing. I didn't even know it was AGVA . I knw
it was a union.
Q. Did you ever have any dealings with any other
unions?
A. None whatsoever.
Q. Do you know Tony Pappa?
A. No.
Q* Do you know Mike Shore?
A. No.
Q. What can you tell us about jack R\*y^s relations
with the Dallas Police Department?
A. I can just tell you — I've been asked that before,
too. He was always, I don't know, I guess he thought it
would help his place. He was always courteous to them. At
Christinas time I think he would give some of them presents,
whiskey or something. That's my idea. I don't know for
sure. He was very close with them. A TV announcer there
named, I can't think of his name, but one of the TV
announcers, he just liked to get everywhere.
Q. Was it Gordon McLendon?
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A. I think that's the name, yes. He knew Gordon
very well. I'd hear him speak of him all the time.
Q. I'm sorry, you would hear Jack Ruby speak of
McLendon?
A. Yes; maybe he ran ads with him or something, I
don't know. Jtist like Tony, I think the reason he knew
Tony was on account of his ads in the papers and things, I
would say.
Q. Did you know Gordon McLendon?
A. Mo , sir.
Q. Did jack Ruby ever talk to you about Gordon
McLendon?
A. To tell you the truth, he either introduced
Brescia, in that letter I^ve you, to Gordon or Brescia
introduced him to Gordon McLendon. I'm not sure which way
it was. But Brescia used to come to Dallas with a pro-
fessional basketball team. Mhat's the name of that trick
team?
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Q, Globetrotters?
A. It was another one. It was a well-known team.
And Brescia was a publicity man for them.
Q. Did jack Ruby have any friends with the Dallas
Police Department?
A. I really don't know. I have no idea. I wasn't
that familiar with him to know tiho his friends were.
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Q- Did jack Ruby ever tell you that he had pull with
the Dallas Police Department?
A. No , he didn *t .
Q. To your knowledge, did Jack Ruby ever exercise any
pull with the Dallas Police Depzirtment?
A. Not to my knowledge, no.
Q. Were you familiar with the Dallas Police Associa-
tion?
A. No, sir. I don't think I knew many policemen in
Dallas .
Q. Did you know Lieutenant George Butler who formerly
headed the Dallas Police Association?
A. I didn't know him intimately. I knew who he was.
Q. What did you know about Lieutenant Butler?
A. I think he was the head of the vice squad, I be*
lieve. I'm aot sure.
Q. did you happen to know him?
A. I don't remcanber how I met him.
Q. Was he an associate of H . L. Hunt?
A. I wouldn't think so.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know Lieutenant George Butler?
A. Did Jack Ruby know Butler? I wouldn't think so.
He could have, I don't know,
Q. Did jack Ruby ever complain that he had sane prob-
lems with the police other than that one curfew incident?
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A. That's the only time I ever heard of. I think
it was about a curfew. l sent him to Schepps. He said
he was being harassed because he was Jewish and I said the
nan for you to go to see is go see Mr. Schepps and explain
it to him. Maybe he can straighten it out.
Q. Did members of the Dallas police Department ever
come to Jack Ruby for information?
A. Mot that I know of.
Q. Did menders of the FBI office in Dallas ever cone
to Jack Ruby for information?
A. I don't know but I wouldn't think so.
Q. During the time you were in Dal las « did organised
crime have any impact on activities in Dallas?
A. Organised crime* no. Like 1 told you, the people
that had the gambling there was Miller and Scarborough and
Dalton, as far as I know.
Q. So it was your impression that it was a local
operation?
A. Local 6peration.
Q. Was there anyone fron outside who had an influence
on Dallas that you know of?
A. Not that I know of. I would have to say no.
Q. On November 20, 1963, what contact did you have
with an agency of the federal government?
A. On what?
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Q. On Novenber 20, 1963, did you have any contact
with any agency of the government?
A. Maybe it was the FBI questioning me.
Q. %at was prior to the assassination.
A. Was that prior?
Q. Yes .
A. I don't know of any in '63, no.
Q. Do you recall on November 20, 1963, that you
applied for the renewal of a work card in Nevada?
A. Sure.
Q. Do you remember around that time that you had to
get a renewal?
A. '63, let me see, '63, that was when l got into the
Ihunderbird, yes .
Q. Whet did you have—
A. 1 got a sheriff's card.
Q. A what?
A. A sheriff's card. You had to get a sheriff's
card. I've got one in my pocket. Do you want to see it?
Would you like to see it?
Q. Sure.
A. Everybody that works here has to have one of
these.
Q. So the fact that you were applying for the work
card was not because you were in any kind of trouble?
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A. Of course not.
Q. Did you have a card previously?
A. I had a card. I've got it soneMhere. Here's one
I had downtown (indicating).
KR. PURDY: Mr. McWillie is showing ae a hum
Vegas Police Department registration card, A-58376, which
is a permanent card. He's listed as a pit boss. Bis
address and signature and the signature of the Chief of
Police are listed.
THE WITNESS: That's a sheriff's card. I got that
in '63 when I came here.
MR. PURDY: He's also handed me a Clark County
Sheriff's Department ID card. Mo. 63658, which is dated
February 15, 1963. His name is listed. He has signed it
and it is signed by Sheriff Ralph Lamb, L-a-m->b.
THE WITNESS: And it show e where I %»orked at the
Thunderbird, they scratched it out. This other card was a
permanent card. When you work downtown, you have to have
one of these (indicating), it waa permanent. Now you have
to have one of these (indicating). You don't have to have
this combined now with the sheriff.
BY MR. PURDY:
Q. So right now all you need is a card from the police
department and you don't need a card from the sheriff's
office?
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A. You have to have a card from the sheriff's office
not this card (indicating) .
Q. Not the Las Vegas Police Department card.
A. me sheriff is oK^re or leas a police chief now.
Q. Since you still have and obviously had or was
issued in February of X963, what reason would you have had
in November of X963 to apply for any other hind of card?
A. X963, isaybe that was when I was going to Arruba.
I had to go to the police chief, I think, and I had to get
a letter from the police chief to get cleared down there be-
cause they cleared you through Scotland Yards add the FBI
and the local here, mat's the only thing I can recall.
Q. DO you recall a Mr. Robert Kellerer, an identifi-
cation officer with the Reno Sheriff's Office?
A. Mo, I don't.
Q. Did you—
A. (Interrupting) I had a card up thare* too. I
threw it away I think.
Q. On Noveiriser 20, 1963, would there have been any
reason that you would have needed to contact the Reno
Sheriff's Office for a renewal of a card or for any other
reason?
A. Maybe they contacted them down here, mat's
probably what happened.
Q. By November 20, X963, you had already moved from
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Reno to Las Vegas, is that right?
A. November ‘63, yes, I came here in ‘63 at the
Thanderbird. Now, it ‘s a possibility that checking me oat,
they checked with the Reno Police Department. 1 would have
to say that they might do that. They would do that, wouldn’t
they?
Q. Mr. McWillie, you stated previously that you re-
ceived a phone call from Jack Ruby sometime in 1963 about
his problems with AGVA ?
A. That ‘a right,
Q. About when in 1963 was that?
A. It was the early part of 1963, I think. Let me
see. ‘63 now. I went to the Thunderbird in ‘63. It had
to be the early part of ‘63. Doesn’t the FBI have it on
its report? I told them about it. I’m sure they do. It’s
hard for me to remember dates.
Q. We understand. I think you’re doing very well.
Now, that conmunication had been in the form of
telephone calls, right?
A. He must have called me three or four times. The
FBI even asked me why he called me.
Q. After that contact with Jack Ruby, what other
contact did you have with him prior to the assassination?
A. He would write me letters about his club, the new
club he had and how beautiful it was and about the rasor
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blades, he sent me some raxor blades once or twice,
Sheffield raxor blades l think they called then,
Q. Did you and jack Ruby ever talk again on the
phone prior to the assassination?
A. Prior to the assassination 7
Q. Right.
A. Just about the AGVA .
Q. Did you see jack Ruby again after those phone
calls about the AGVA and prior to the assassination?
A. No, never saw Hm again.
Q. When was the last time that you saw jack Ruby
prior to the assassination?
A. The last time I saw Jack Ruby prior to the
assassination, I was driving from Miami to Cal-4leva Lodge
where I was going to work In June In 1961, I stopped at
his house and slept there that night and then drove on.
Q. Did you see jack Roby again after the assassina-
tion?
A, Never, never seen jack Ruby after that time I
saw him.
Q. Did you and Jack Ruby ever escchsge any letters
after the assassination?
A. No, sir. I had all I wanted of jack ^uby. Every
time I turned around the FBI was questioning me about him.
You know I wouldn't write him. I *m not that silly.
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Q. Did you and jack Ruby aver talk on the phone
after the aasaasination?
A. Mo, air,
Q. Did you and Jack Ruby ever aend any neaaagea of
any kind to each other after the aaaaaaination?
A. Mo, air. After the aaaaaaination I didn’t vant
to hear hia name again.
MR. WOLFi Let the record reflect that ve *ve re-
turned to Mr. McWillie the original lettera that he received
from hia brother concerning Tony Zoppi and the trip to Cuba.
THE WITNESS: My brother got it from Matty Breacia
and Matty Breacia got it from Tony Zoppi.
BY MR. WOLF:
Q. Mr. McWillie, 1 *d now like to queation: you con-
cerning the time when you were in Cuba and aeveral indivl-
duala you may have met while you were there.
You’ve teatified that you moved to Cuba in approxi-
mately the middle of X958, ia that correct?
A. I went there in ‘58, yea, right.
Q. Waa that your firat trip to Cuba?
A. I had been to Cdsa, I took my mother and wife Ad
daughter to Cuba in the *40*a, juat for a trip overnight on
a boat. We took a ahip over there, the Florida, I think
they called it.
Q. Bad you been there any other time prior to the
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middle of 1958?
A. Mo.
Q. On your first trip in 1958, hoM long did you
stay in Cuba?
A. I stayed until we broke relations with Cuba in
*61, January 1, 1961.
Q, And you testified that when you moved to Cuba,
you went to work at the Tropicana Hotel, is that correct?
A. That *s right.
Q. And how did you obtain the job at the Tropicana
Hotel while you were in Dallas?
A. A fellow called me from Cuba and asked me if I *d
be interested in going over there to work add I set up an
appointment and went there and talked to them and then went
back to Dallas and went back to Ctisa in about a week, I
believe.
Q, So you did return to Dallas after the first trip
to Cuba?
A. I think maybe a we^, ten days.
0, Who was that who called you?
A. A fellow named Johnny Williams.
Q. Row did he get your name?
A. I met him in Dallas. I don't know how I met him
but I did meet him and he found out I was in the gamgling
business and he said, "Maybe I can get you a good job over
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in Cuba.** Sure enough, he called me a week or so a±er he
left Dallas.
Q. Where did Mr. Williams work?
A. Mr. Williams didn't work. I don't know what Mr.
Williams did, to tell you the truth.
Q. Where did he live?
A. He lived in Boston.
Q. And where did you first meet Mr. Williams?
A. I met him in Dallas.
Q. He was just visiting at that time?
A. Sir?
Q. He was just visiting at that time?
A. He was just visiting Dallas. I don't recall how
I met him, but I met him in Dallas.
Q. And who did you see when you first welit to Cuba
for the interview?
A. I went to see the Foxes. Ihey had a meeting and
there was Martines Fox and Oscar Cheninder.
Q. was Pedro Fox present?
A. Pedro Fox, that's Martinez's brother. There were
several Cubans there and an interpreter.
Q. Were the Foxes the owners of the Tropicana?
A. They were the only owners. I was the only
American in there.
Q. Do you know Mr. T. W. Richardson?
A. Tes, sir, sure do.
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Q. And h(w do you know Mr. Richardson?
A. Hew long have I known him?
Q. long have you known and how do you know Nr.
Richardson?
A. I *ve known Mr, Richardson since I started dealing
dice about 40 some odd years ago, 47 years ago.
Q. You met him in Dallas?
A. No, I met him in Mississippi. I was dealing dice
in Mississippi then.
Q. Did Mr. Richardson have any connection with Cuba?
A. I think T. W. had something to do with the
managing the Capri.
Q. Did you see him while you were in Cuba?
A. Didn’t see him too much. I did see him in Cuba.
Q. Did you see him that first time when you went over
to take the job at the Tropicana?
A. Ho, I didn’t see him. He dicki ’t know i was there.
T. W. was in the Riverside Hotel and he left. He was the
manager of the Riverside Hotel. I took his place when he
resigned in *62, I think. But I've known T. N. for years.
He’s a -vary -nice man.
Q. You stated that you met the Foxes when you first
went over to interview for your job with the Tropicana and
you also stated that you were promised a percentage of the
Trppicana if things were successful.
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A. Martin«x promised me a percentage if it ever
did any business, but it never did any business, niat
was right at the time of the rev61ution. Do you have what
date I went over to work there?
Q. Approximately September of >58.
A. I was going to say August. It must have been
September .
Q. was the Tropicana successful prior to the revo-
lution?
A. It had been successful. It was a very beautiful
place, beautiful shows, beautiful gaming room.
Q. Were the Poxes financially well off?
A. Yes, I >m sure they were.
Q. Were they the whole owners of the casino?
A. Were they what?
Q. Were they the whole and sole owners of the
casino?
A. Yes, I would say they were. I >d have to say I'm
almost positive.
Q. They had partners?
A. No.
Q. Do you Know if they war received financial backing
from anybody?
A. They didn't need any financial backing.
Q. Did they ever get any loans from anybody?
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A. I vfouldn*t think so because they had a big business
that made ID thing but money for years and years. They had
the numbers and every other thing.
Q. DO you know, did jack Ruby know the Foxes?
A. Yes, I introduced him to the Poxes.
Q. When he came to Cuba?
A. When he came there, I Introduced him, yes.
Q. Did he have any other dealings with the poxes?
A. He ran around with me. The whole time he was there
he was running around me except when he went to bed.
Q. What happened to the Poxes when the government
closed the hotel?
A. Well, they eventually all went to Miami.
Q. Iliey did not stay in Cuba?
A. Sir?
Q. They did not stay in Cuba?
A. Ihey stayed there for a while but eventually they
left and went to Miami.
Q. And you took a job at the Capri Hotel, is that
correct?
A. Right.
Q. Who did you know at the Capri Hotel to get the
job?
A. If 1 ronember correctly, I think it was Martinez
told me to go up there, that I could get a job up there if
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I'd go up there. And I went up there and saw some fellow,
Angelo, I don't know his last name, but his first name was
Aggelo .
Q. Could the lastrsme have been Bruno?
A. No.
Q. Do you know a Mr. Angelo Bruno?
A. I *ve known him to see him in Cuba. I've seen him
in Cuba. i don't know Mr. Bruno.
Q. You never met Mr. Bruno?
A. No, just to say hello. Re knew who I was because
in this business I 'm a pretty good man in the gamabling
business. I've bean in it so many years.
Q. Do you know a Mr. Willie Bischoff?
A. Lefty Clark, that was his name. Wasn't his name
Lefty Clark? I never did know his right name.
Q. Yes, also known as Lefty Clark.
A. I took his place in the Tropicana. They let him
go and I took hie place there.
Q. Why was Mr. Bischoff let go, do you know?
A. Well, it had something to do with the Black Jack
getting cheated or something, something like that. That's
what I heard. I don't know why they let him go.
Q. Did you associate with Mr. Bischoff at all after
he was let go?
A.
No, just to say hello.
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Q. Do you knov if Jack Ruby knew Mr. Biachoff?
2
A. No, I sure he didn't.
3
Q. DO you know a Mr. Babe Baron?
4
A. NO, I know who he is. if it*s the fellow Ihn
thinking about, he used to be at the Sands.
6
Q. Yes .
7
A. I don't know him but I know \ho he is. He may be
ft
dead. Is he living?
9
Q. He's still alive.
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A. I didn't know that. But 1 know who he is. Th^
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call him the General. But I never met him in my life.
12
Q. Did you know that he was in Cuba?
13
A. No, I didn't.
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Q. Do you know if Jack Ruby knew him at all?
15
A. If Jack Ruby met him?
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Q. Ri^t.
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A. I wouldn't think so.
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Q. Who were the owners of the Capri?
19
A. I don't know. I don't have any idea. I went in
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there and took charge of the day shift and I don't know
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how long I was there to tell you the truth. But it wasn't
22
too long. I went to open up one morning and they stuck
23
machine guns in my stomach and I gave them the keys and
24
turned around and walked off.
25
Q. Did you ever work at the Riviera Hotel?
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A. NO.
Q. Did you have any affiliation with the Riviera?
A. No.
Q. When you were at the Tropicana, what were your
primary duties?
A. To manage the casino.
Q. Were you familiar generally with the prior
management of the casino operation?
A. No, not the bookkeeping and all that kind of
thing. I was familiar with running, seeing that the games
didn't get cheated and the dealers add everything stayed
in line.
Q. Were you responsible for hiring individuals to work
in the casino?
A. No, they hired all them. There wasn't nothing but
Cubans working there when l was there.
Q. Did the casino have to pay a tax to ^e Cvdban
government to operate?
A, I really don't know. i wouldn't know.
Q. Did Cuban officials have to be bribed to have
a casino operation?
A. I don't)siow. There wouldn't be any way I'd know
that.
Q. Were you familiar with any of the Cuban officials
in the government at that time?
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A. No.
Q. Do you recollect any of their names?
A. No, I could not recollect one name. Ventura, I
think he was the chief of police, I believe it was, but I
<ldn't know him. I'd see him come in there with his body
guards .
Q. Do you recall any other names of Cuban officials?
A. Officials?
Q. Officials who would have responsibility to super"
vise casinos.
A. Supervise the casinos?
Q- Or involved generally.
A. No. Ventura didn't have nothing to do with
the casino: I just knew him to see him because he was
supposed to be a very vicious fellow.
Q. How about any other Cuban officials in the govern-
ment generally, can you recall any of their names?
A. No, I wouldn't have any reason to know any of th«n.
Q. Did the casinos make payments to any non-government
officials to continue operating, the owners of the casinos?
A. No, I wouldn't think so. It belonged to them.
Q. The Foxes never discussed that with you?
A. I didn't understand.
Q. Did the Poxes ever discuss the general operation of
the casino with you?
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A. Mo, in fact, they couldn't even speak English.
One could speak English, Pedro.
Q. Do you know a Mr . Norman Rothman?
A. I know him to see him.
Q. Have you. ever met Mr. Rothman?
A. It was in Cuba, yes. He'd cone in and out of the
Tropicana every once in a while. He came up and introduced
himself to me and shook hands with me. I'd see him gambling
there when l 'd go around to different places.
Q. Did you ever have any discussions with Mr. Rothman?
A. Mo.
Q. Do you know a Mr. Santo Trafficante?
A. Know him to see him.
Q. Have you ever met Mr. Trafficante?
A. Like I say, he knew who I was and he shook hands
with me when he saw me, but that was it. I've been asked
that a lot of ^imes, too. Hut I didn't know Mr. Trafficante
intimately, no.
Q. Did anybody introduce you to him or did he intro-
duce himself to you?
A. Maybe Pedro did, I don't know, when he would come
in a party or something.
Q. Did you ever meet Mr. Trafficante apart from being
in Cuba in the casinos?
A. Mot that I remenber, no.
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Q. YOU never met Mr. Trafficante in the United States?
A. Not that 1 recall. Maybe 1 did, 1 don’t think so.
Q. Are you avare that Mr. Trafficante vaa imprisoned
in Cuba?
A. Yes, there were a bunch of them imprisoned.
Q. Were you in Cuba at that time?
A. Yeah.
Q. Do you)«&ow why Mr. Trafficante was imprisoned?
A. TO tell you the truth, 1 don’t. 1 think they
just wanted to get them out of there myself.
Q. Did you visit Mr. Trafficante in prison?
A. I didn’t visit him. I went out there once or
twice to visit a fellow, he was a dealer. Re had a young
son and a wife and he gambled all his money away. At times
we would take up a collection amongst dealers and give him
money. 1 went out there once or twice to see him.
Q. Did you see anybody else in prison?
A. I saw srverybody out there. Trafficante, 1 think he
was in there.
Q. Did you see Mr. Trafficante?
A. law him but 1 didn’t talk to him.
Q. You saw him but you could not talk to him.
A. I didn't know him that intimately.
Q. Do you know of anybody who did visit Mr. Trafficante
in prison?
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A. No, 1 don't. I vent out there vith someone but 1
don't recall vho it was.
Q. Do you know a John Wilson Hudson?
A. Who?
Q. A John Wilson Hudson.
A. Hudeon?
Q. Yes .
A. No, sir, I don't.
Q. Were you afraid of being imprisoned yourself?
A. They never did bother me for some reason. I don't
)cnorw why. They never did the whole time I was there.
Q. DO you have any accounting for that?
A. Sir.
Q. Do you know any reason why they would not bother
you?
A. Sir?
Q. Do you know any reason why they would not bother
you?
A. I don't know, it could have been the Foxes, 1
don't know. I don't know why they didn't but they didn't.
I never was arrested there. If I'd have stayed there. I'd
probably have gotten arrested after we broke relations with
them. 1 left the first day of January 1961, I think it was.
Q. Was jack Ruby in Cuba visiting you during the time
when you went to visit the prison and saw Santo Trafficante
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there?
A. 1 don't thin)c so. He could heve been but I
don't thin)c so. He could have been but I don't really thin)c
he was. i don't remember what date Jack was there.
Q. Did you discuss with J^ck Ruby the imprisonment
of many of the people that were working in Cuba?
A. No, I didn't discuss things like that with him.
Q. What other individuals did you see during your
visit to ^at prison? Do you remember the names of them?
A. I saw Dino, Dino Cellini. He was the manager of
the place, too, where I had worked.
Q. Which place was that?
A. Tropicana . Then he was at the Riviera.
Q. And you knew Mr. Cellini?
A. I didn't know him initimately. I knew him to talk
to him, how's business and this and that.
Q. Did you ever heve any business dealings with Mr.
Cellini?
A. Never .
Q. Did Jack Ruby knew Mr. Cellini?
A. Ho, he wouldn't know Dino.
Q. Did jack Ruby know Mr. Trafficante?
A. NO.
Q. Was Mr. Rothman put in prison?
A. I don't think so. I don't beliee he was.
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Q. Did you visit Hr. Cellini vhen ha was in prison?
A. Sir?
Q. Did you visit Mr. Cellini when he was in prison?
A. I said hello tohira because I knew him.
Q. But the primary reason for your going to the
prison was--*
A. (interrupting) To see this fellm Degeorgio or
whatever his name was.
Q. was there only one prison where all the people
were kept?
A. No, they had two prisons. They had one they
called Principle, was a real bad prison. This one didn^t
look like a prison. it had a wire fence around it.
Q. What could you do to try and help a friend of
yours who was in prison to get out?
A. I wasn't trying to help him get out. I just went
out there to say hello to him,
Q. Was there anything one could do, even if not
yourself , genera lly 7
A. No, I don't think so. I wouldn't know, but I
wouldn't think they could get them out.
Q. Could you bribe anybody to get them out of prison?
A. I don't really know about that, I don't know.
Q. Did you know Mr. Meyer Lansky?
A. No, sir, never laid eyes on him in my life. I know
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his brother, knew his brother.
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Q.
Jake?
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A.
Jake, very fine nan.
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Q.
HOW did you know Jake?
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A.
I knew Jake in Cuba .
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Q.
HOW did you first aeet Jake?
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A.
I don't recall how i met him. 1 just don't re-
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call.
I did meet him. It might have been through Dino.
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Q.
Did Jack Ruby know Jake Lansky?
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A.
Mo, positive he didn't.
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Q.
What was the nature of your relationship with
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Jake LpSnsky?
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A.
Just to say hello and that's all.
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Q.
Did you ever have dinner with him?
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A.
Mo.
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Q.
What casino did Mr. Lansky operate at?
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A.
Mr. Lansky was around the Riviera. I don't know if
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he operated it or what but he was there, Jake Lansky I >m
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talking
about.
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Q.
Did you know Mr. John Roselli?
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A.
I didn't know him. I've seen him around town here
2*2
like 1
told the FBI and then Mr. Fenton. I've seen Mr.
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Roselli
around here. Any time I would go in the Sands to see
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a sh(M,
I would see him there.
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Q.
Did you ever see Mr. Roselli outside of Vegas?
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A. Never in my life.
Q. You never saw him in Cuba?
A. I don 't think he was in Cuba when 1 was there.
Q. Did you ever talk to him while he was here in
Vegas?
A. I never talked to him while he was there. He's
kind of a belligerent fellow. I had no reason to say any-
thing to him.
Q. Do you know a Mr. San Giancana?
A. Mo.
Q. Have you heard of Mr. Giancana?
A. I don't know him.
Q. YOU never met Mr. Giancana?
A. No.
Q. Do you know if Mr. Roselli or Mr. Giancana had
interests in Cuban casinos?
A. There wouldn't be any way I'd know that.
Q. Had you heard that before?
A. I never heard of it, no. What attracted me to Mr.
Roselli was any time I ever saw him he had on dark glasses*
and he was a well dressed fellow and a fellow you would
notice in a crowd, you know, especially with the dark
glasses on.
Q. You stated that you were the only American working
at the Tropicana, all the other employees were Cuban?
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A. That ' B right.
Q. Was that characteristic for most of the other
casinos?
A. No, the other casinos had mostly Americans on
them, especially on the dice games, you )cnow. The dice
games are pretty hard to deal and undersmd and learn. So
it was mostly American dealers.
Q. When you were hired at the casino, did you have
to apply for an employee work card like you *ve shown us for
here in the state of Nevada?
A. No, I had to go to Dallas and get, after Castro
got there, l had to go to Dallas and get a letter from the
sheriff .
Q. What type of letter?
A. Sir?
Q. What type of letter from the sheriff?
A. As to my character, you know, I hsdn ^t been in
trouble there,
Q. That was after Castro took over?
A. Yes? and I took it back and gave it to the Foxes.
Q. Prior to Castro taking over in 1958 or *59, 1950,
did you have, in September of *58 when you first got your
job at the Tropicana, did you have to apply for a work card
through the Cuban government?
A. No, I just went in there and talked to them and
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got the job and went to work.
Q. When did you leave Cuba?
A. January 1961.
Q. You stayed approximately two yevs, then, after
Fidel Castro took over?
A. '59, *60, yes, almost two years.
Q* From 1958 through 1961, did you ever return to the
united States for visits?
A. Many tines, yes. 1 used to bring money and
deposit it for the Foxes.
Q. And where would that be deposited?
A. Sir?
Q. Where would that be deposited?
A. Well, I deposited money in the Pan American Bank
and I deposited money in the, I think it was a Miami bank,
I don * t know .
Q. Were moft of yoxir trips to Miami?
A. Sir?
Q. Were mo± of your trips from Cuba to Miami?
A. To the banks, yes.
Q. Did you ever go anywhere else besides Miami when
you returned for a visit?
A. Ho.
Q- How did you keep in touch with your friends in
the United States while you were in Cuba?
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A. 1 didn't keep in touch with them.
Q. Did you write them at all?
A. Very few of them.
Q. Did you phone them at all?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever make any phone calls while you were
in Cuba back to the United States?
A. I don't recall getting any. Maybe Jack Ruby
called about Tony Zoppi, maybe, said they were comiz^ or
something like that. Otherwise 1 never got any calls.
Q. Did you ever place any calls from Cuba to people
in the united States?
A. Not that I recall. I don't knew who it could
have been.
Q. You told us about Mr. Meyer Panitz.
A. Sir?
Q. Mr. Meyer PmnitM, P-e-n-i-t-s.
A. Panitz, yeah.
Q. Did you ever call Mr. Panitz in Miasil?
A. It's possible that I did because he's a very
close friend of mine.
Q. Could that phone call have been right after Jtek
Ruby visited you?
A. Oh, no, I think Panitz was in Cuba when jack Ridsy
was there. I believe he was in Cuba.
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Q. He was a close friend of Jack Ruby, is that
correct?
A. Panit 2 , yes .
Q. What activities did Mr. Panitz engage in?
A. Years ago, eany years ago, he was a book stfker.
Q. How many years ago was that?
A. Oh, Christ, I'd say 35, 40 years ago.
Q. After that, what type of activity did he engage
in?
A. He could have worked in Cuba, I 'm not sure. I
think he worked in Cuba.
Q. You knew him in Dallas, is that correct?
A. Yea; Memphis, too.
Q. And did there come a time when he moved to Miami?
A. Did what?
Q, Did Mr. Panitz BDve to Miami?
'A. Re was in Dallas, he worked in Dallas. He worked
for me at the Top of the Hill, what we call, box watching
the crap games, sitting down. Where else did he work? He
could have worked around the Top of the Hill, I remember
that, and i believe he worked in Ctiba. I believe he worked
at the Capri too in Cuba.
Q. What period of time was that?
A. I don't have any idea. I'm sure he worked there.
Q. Did Jack Ruby see Mr. Panitz while he was in
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Ciiba?
A. I couldn't say for sure.
Q. you assume he would have if Mr. Panitx was there?
A. I *m sure if Panitz was there at the time* yeah.
Lihe I say, I don't know what year he was there.
Q. IS Mr. Panitz alive today?
A. Re's dead.
Q. And you don't recall calling Mr. Panitz frcsi Cuba
right after Jack Ruby was there?
A. Right after jack R\iby was there?
Q. Right after Jack Ruby visited you, you don't
recall calling Mr. panitz in Miami?
A. 1 don't recall calling him. It's possible.
Q. Do you know Misty Lane Miner?
A. Yes.
Q. How do you knew Ms. Miner?
A. I used to go with her for a few s^nths. She was
in Cuba , too .
Q. When was she in Cuba?
A. I don't know. She wasn't there to see me. She
just came ever there. We had broken up a couple or three
years before. I think she was there around a week, 1 *m not
sure.
Q. Did she see you when she was in Cuba?
A. Yes, 1 said hello to her.
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Q. Did Bhe giv« you any nessage from jack Ruby?
A. No.
Q. Did Jack Ruby know her?
A. He knew her, sure.
Q. How long did Jack Ruby stay in Cuba when he visited
you?
A. To the best of nty recollection, I 'd say six days
BMybe, not over a week, I don't think.
Q. Can you remember what activities Mr. Rudy did
while he was down there?
A. He was right out there where I worked. Every
morning when I got up he was there. When l left the place,
he went with me to eat and went to bed.
Q. Were there any special shows during that fWrlod
of time that Mr. Ruby wanted to see or things to do?
A. The best show down there was at the Capri. Maybe
he went there once or twice.
Q. Do you rcnenber anything in particular that Mr.
Ruby did during that week?
A. I don't remember a darn thing he did but bug me
all week.
^ When was this that Mr. Ruby visited you in Cuba?
A. I'd have to say it was in '59.
Q. DO you remember the sionth it was?
A. It might have been august. 1 don't recall. I be-
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lieve it was August. I don't know for sura.
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Q. How do you pinpoint tha data of August?
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A. It just seams like to ma it was in August. 1
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tdld Mr. Fenton that, I believe.
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0* Is there anything particular that sticks out in
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your mind?
7
A. No, it just seems like it was the middle of the
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year. I'd have to say it was right around August, I'd say.
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I'm not sure. Dhere's no way i could tell you for sure.
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Q. Was it durixig hurricane season?
11
A. No, I don't think so. l think the hurricane
12
season starts in September, I'm not sure.
13
Q. Did Mr. Ruby, to your knowledge, ever visit Cidsa
14
at any other time?
15
A. Not that I know of. I would say no.
Ifi
Q, He never discussed any other visits with you?
17
A. I would say no because I never did see him there
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any more. I know if he had been there, I would have seen
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him.
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Q. When he was : in Cuba, did you discuss the Castro
•21
situation with Mr. Ruby?
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A. No.
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0* You have no idea how long prior to Castro's taking
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over he was down there?
25
A. No, I don't, I reaily don't. I know that Castro
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had taken over when he was there, that he had already taken
over . 1 think he took over Narf Year's of 1959, 1 believe.
Q. To clarify the dates of jack Ruby's visit in
Cuba, to the best of your recollection, it was August of
19597
A. That's what I'd say. I don't really know. Look
at the FBI report, maybe they know. I'm net trying to be
smart but I don't know the date.
Q. I understand that. We're trying to clarify it
for the record.
in other words, it was definitely after Castro
took over?
A. Definitely, yes. It was definitd^ after Castro
took over. That's when they really needed business. That's
the reason I called him. They were trying to get Tony to
cone down there. I couldn't say for sure, but I'd have to
say it was around July or August.
Q. So due to the Castro takeover, you needed business,
and you suggested to the Faxes —
A. (Interrupting) I suggested this thing to them
before that, too. They finally made up their minds after
business got so bad, they was doing anything to try to get
business because not many people came over there, tourists,
after Castro got there.
Q. So you suggested to the Foxes that you knew jack
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Ruby?
A. I knew Tony Zoppi and I )cn€M a man that could gat
him to bring him over there.
Q. And when did you first meet Mr. Zoppi?
A. I'd say in the middle *40'a, just to speak to
him. I didn't know him well. He was a columnist and he *d
make night clubs and you M see him around night clubs and
restaurants.
Q. Why didn't yourcall Mr. Zoppi directly to see if
he would come over?
A. Because I didn't knew him that well. Jack Ruby
did business with him with the paper. He was with the
Dallas Morning Mews. In fact, he was with Zoppi, like I
told you, when President Kennedy got shot, I believe. I
believe he was there the next day or the same day. I mean
I'm going by the papers, what the papers said.
Q. How did you first get in touch with Jack Ruby
about inviting Tony Zoppi and himself to come down to Cuba?
A. I believe I called him on the phone# I'm not sure.
It's possible that I did. I might have written him a
letter, I don't know.
Q. And what was Mr. Rtiby's reaction?
A. It was all right. He said he could get him to
come. He was supposed to come.
Q. What did you do in response to Mr. Ruby's reaction?
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A. I just told him it \K>uld help us out at the
Tropicana if he could get Tony down there and give us some
writeups in his colxnnn.
Q. Did you wait until Jach Ruby called you back to
got in touch with Tony Zoppi?
A. I don't recall. I know Tony agreed to conte down
there. I even called him or he called me, I don't know
which .
Q. Did you call Tony directly?
A. No, I called Jack. I didn't know Tony well enough
to talk to him.
Q. After your first phone call with jack Ruby, what
period of time elapsed until either jack called you or you
called jack back to —
A. (Interrupting) It was a pretty good while.
Q. It was a long time?
A. I would say it was a few months.
Q. So, then, you probably called him sometime in the
spring of 1959 and then it would be a fw months, it
would be August until he finally came down?
A. I'd have to sey that, yeah, then he came by him-
self. If Tony would have came with him, then all this
wouldn't be going on here. It's an unfortunate thing that
he didn't come with him. I think I sent him two tickets,
I'm not sure. I'm positive I sent him two tickets.
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Q. You sent jack Ruby two tickets?
A. tickets, one for him and one for Zoppi.
Q. And that was aftsr Jack Ruby told you that Zoppi
had agreed to come?
A. That he would come, yeah. I'd have to say that's
correct .
Q. And the two tickets were being paid for by the
hotel?
A. Aiey paid me the money. I bought the tickets.
Q. You bought the tickets?
A. Yeah, I bought the tickets but they gave me the
money.
Q. They gave you the money?
A. Oh, sure. It wasn't a hotel, it was a night club.
The Tropicana wasn't a hotel.
Q. And they did not expect to be paid back for these
two tickets, did they?
A. Oh, no, it was part of their publicity. They
spent a' lot of money advertising. In fact, they had a sign
across the causeway in Miami about a block long for years.
Q. And you prepaid the two tickets and sent then to
JSck Ruby, is that correct?
A. I paid for than with money, is thac what you mean,
prepaid?
Q. Yes .
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A. Yes.
Q. Did you also tell Mr* Ruby that or make for Mr.
Ruby any accommodations for where they would stay when they
got down there?
A. I told them that they would be taken care of in
any hotel they wanted to, the bill would be taken care of
because that was the agreement I had with the Faxes.
Q. And that was not prepaid in advance, was it?
A. Mo.
Q. Where did Jack Ruby stay when he got down there?
A. n^ey didn’t pay his way when he got there because
he didn’t bring Zoppi. He stayed at a little hotel there.
I was living at the poxa at the time, F-o<-x*a, it was an
apartment building. He stayed in a little hotel. I could
look out my window and see it down on the corner.
Q. Was his ticket still paid for even though Tony
Zoppi didn’t come?
A. We went ahead and paid that» they did rather. I
didn’t get it back.
Q. The letter you've given us today from Tony Zoppi,
the portion of the letter you gave to us today, do you still
have the top of that letter?
A. The whole letter?
Q. yes.
A. Mo, it was a personal letter to this fellow here.
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ttiat’s the only part I had of it.
Q. The letter was addressed to?
A. The letter that Tony sent was sent to Brescia.
Q. Right. And did he give you the entire letter or
just the bottom portion?
A. He gave me the entire letter but I tore off the
bottom part because that was the only part that concerned
me. It was all personal.
Q. And you destroyed the top portion? Tou no longer
have the top portion of the letter?
A. There wasn’t anything in there that anyone would
be interested in. i just read the bottom part where he
concluded his letter and tore it out.
Q. Do you still have the top part?
A. No.
Q. was there any reason you didn't give that letter
to Mr. Cline and Mr. Fenton when they came to talk to you?
A, I told them I had it.
Q. Did they ask to see it?
A. They told me if 1 got subpoenaed to bring it with
me, I'm pretty sure they did. I'm positive 1 brought it
up to them. You see, when they interviewed me, I was at a
friend of mine's house, staying overnight, because they were
gone out of town and they were scared someone would break in
their house and they came over there. In fact, I went down
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a nd met them .
Q. Do you )cnow why Tony Zoppi couldn't go to Cuba?
A. Sir?
Q. Do you know why Tony Zoppi couldn't go to Cuba on
that trip?
A. vrhy he didn *t come?
Q. Yes.
A. No« I don't. I have no idea. I guess he was
busy or something^ couldn't nake it.
Q. Why did Jack Ruby come?
A. He just wanted to use the free ticket, I guess.
Q. Before Jack Rvlby came, did he tell you thm Tony
Zoppi would not be coming?
A. No, he didn't tell me. I would have told him to
stay there then I wouldn't have had all this.
Q. Do you recall being interviewed by the FBI concern-
ing Jack Ruby's visits to Cuba?
A. I recall them interviewing me about Jack Rii>y, yes.
Q. Did you tell the FBI about Tony Zoppi?
A. I don't think I did, to tell you the truth. Z
didn't think about it until I got the darn letter. Then it
all came back to me why he was coming down there.
Q. And this letter is the letter you received in 1976?
A. I received a letter in 1976 from my brother# yes.
Q. So from 1963 to 1976, you had just forgotten?
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A. I had just forgot about it, to tall you tha
truth. I was all shook up* about tha darn thing happening and
it just slipped my mind.
Q. Wasn't really the only reason for Ruby to come
visit was to gat Tony Zoppi?
A. That's right.
Q. Isn't that the primary reason for him to visit?
A. That's tha only reason that he came down there
was ha was supposed to bring Tony Zoppi and he didn't bring
him.
Q. It wasn't to give Jack Rdsy a vacation, was it?
A. No, I don't think so. It might have been what I
told the FBI because like I say, I was so shook up when I
talked to them that first time and l didn't know what to
tell them.
Q. In an FBI interview dated Jbne 9, 1964, and the
intervlsw being conducted on June 8, 1964, by special agents
Stevens and McFaul, let me read you part of what you said
about jack Ruby's visit to Ci^a. You stated, ”in 1959, date
unrecalled, he wrote to Ruby and asked him if he woBld like
to come to Havana for a week. He stated there was no ulterior
motive and that he had been a close friend of Ruby's and
extended this Invitation as one would to a brother* He
realised Ruby was working hard with his XMllas night club and
felt that} Ruby .“needed a rest. Because the cost of plane
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tickets in Havana could be paid for by pesos for approxinately
one fifth of the cost of the ticket in the United States,
he purchased a round-trip ticket for Ruby at his own ex-
pense and mailed it to Ruby in Dallas after which Ruby
boarded a plane and flew to Havana for a visit.”
Later in the report, if I may just read another
paragraph, it states, "with further regard to the airline
ticket purchased by HcWillie, he stated that as best he
can recall, the peso evaluation of this ticket was about
$75 and that he had personally absorbed the cost. He could
not be certain whether Ruby repaid him for this ticket after
Ruby reached Havana, again explaining that he purchased the
ticket at Havana and mailed it to Ruby at one fifth of what
it would cost Riaby to buy a comparable ticket in Dallas.
He does not recall standing any othar expenses for Ruby in
connection with the trip and was unable to state whether
Ruby had repaid him for the cost of the ticket or not."
Now, is that an accurate account of whaty>u told
the FBI?
A. I may have told them that but Zoppi was supposed
to come with Ruby. It just slipped my mind about Zoppi,
that's all. I'm sure 1 sent him two tickets. I paid for
them out of my pocket but 1 got the: money from the Foxes.
Q. The agents questioned you in fairly explicit de**
tail, is that not correct?
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A. Sir?
Q. The agents questioned you in fairly explicit de-
tail, is that not correct?
A. They questioned ee pretty good, yes.
Q. I mean they specifically asked you whether or not
there was an ulterior motive for your sending a ticket to
jack Ruby. Don't you think you would have remembered about
Tony Zoppi at that time?
A. I didn't remendber until I got that letter, to tell
you the truth. I did not ramenber about it until I got the
letter and then it all hit me at one time and I said to my-
self, well, I should have told the FBI that.
Q. There's also an FBI report dated November 27, 1963,
the interview being conducted November 25, 1963, by special
agents Stevens and Salisbury concerning Ruby's trip to
Cuba. Again it says, "HcWillie said he had gone to Cid>a
to work at the TTopieana at Havana, Cdda, and while there—
A. (Interrupting) I didn't understand you.
Q. I'm sorry, the report states, "NcWillie said he
had gone to Cuba to work at the Tropicana at Havana, Cuba,
and while there sometime in 1959, Ruby had been in Cuba for
about a one week's vacation and he had seen Ruby there at that)
time. He said he knew of no interests Ruby might have had
in Cuba . "
A. Hewdidn't have any interests in Cuba and he did
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take e vacation when he came by himself. He darn sure did*
Q. And again you did not recall that Tony Zoppi
was the primary reason that Jack Rii>y*-
A. (Interrupting) No, I didn't. To tell you the
truth, I didn't until I got that letter and it hit me and
I said, my, God, I should have told the FBI that.
Q. Even when questioned about the cost of Ruby's
trip?
A. I didn't recall it. Like I say, it was such a
terrible thing that happened that I was just shook all up.
They came out there the same day, I think.
Q. You are sure, however, that jack Ruby's trip to
Cuba was after Castro took over? Are you sure of that now?
A. I'm positive of it, yeah.
Q. And the reason you can date that is— »
A. (Interrupting) I'd have to say, yes, it was after
he took over.
Q. And what's the reason you can date that?
A. I wasn't there--do you have it there when I went
to Cuba? You said September?
Q. Septen^er of 1958,
A. It would have to be after Castro was in.
Q. And the reason you're dating that again is because
of the decline in business due to Castro's takeover, is that
correct?
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A. That’s corract. Business declined when Castro
got there.
Q. HGw was business generally when you first Bowed
to the casino in 1958?
A. Bow was what?
Q. Row was business at the ^opicana?
A. It wasn’t any good. It was going down then.
There was talk in all the papers about Castro going to
arrive there and everything. It had declined'.
Q. It had declined at that time?
A. Real bad.
Q. Could the Foxes have asked you at that time or
you had suggested to the Foxes at that time to get in touch
with Tony Zoppi?
A. I had suggested to the Foxes that we might get some
business out of Dallas if we would get him to write articles
in his column about it.
Q. When was the first time you made that suggestion
to the Foxes?
A. I made that, I believe, when I first went there.
I believe l‘ did. I'm not positive. Then when it got so bad
after Castro got there, I went to them again and they decided
to go ahead with it.
Q. When ^u first made the suggestion to the Foxes, when
you first got there in September of '58, did you tell jack
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Ruby that, in fact, you had made that auggeation?
A. Did I tell—
Q. (interrupting) Did you tell Ruby even though
nothing had been definite with the Foxea?
A. No.
Q. You never told Jac)c Ruby you had made the
auggeation until the Foxea O.K. 'd the deal?
A. In '507
Q. Right, in '58.
A. I don't think ao. I think it waa after Caatro
got there.
Q. You never told him you had made the auggeation
until the Foxea O.K. 'd the deal?
A. No, I didn't call him until after they O.K. 'd the
deal.
Q. You atated that you aaked or you might have aaked
jack Ruby to aend you a gun in Cuba juat beeauae you could
get youraelf killed d^n there, a lot of people had guna.
A. Well, it waa awful bad down there. It waa scary,
little kida carrying machine guna.
Q. Waa there much gun running into Cuba?
A. Sir?
Q. Waa there much gun runnint into Cuba?
A. I don't know about any gun running. No way I'd
knoy about that.
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vrhere did all the guns come from?
Castro brought them with him.
Do you )cnow how Castro got his guns?
No, I don*t have any idea.
Do you know Mr. Robert McKeown?
Mo, sir, I sure don't. You asked me that before.
Do you know Dominick Bartone?
No, air.
Have you ever heard the name before?
Dominick Bartone?
Bartone.
Never heard of him.
Mr. Edward Browder?
Edward who?
Browder.
No, sir.
You never heard that name before?
No. McKeown ' s mine I've read in articles about
But you never met him personally?
No.
You just read that.
I wouldn't know him if I'd see him.
Do you know Mr. Sam Benton?
Who?
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Q. Benton, B-e-n-t-o -n .
A. No, »ir.
Q. We're turning for a moment to Ruby's trip without
Tony Zoppi to Cuba .
A. O.K.
Q. Mr. Zoppi has written an article on the subject.
Are you aware of that fact?
A. No, I 'lA not.
Q. In Mr . Zoppi 's article, he states that the trip
was supposed to be in Decenber of 1958, which is prior to
Castro's taking over.
A. Maybe I did call him before '59. But I did call
him in '59 again, if idid make a call in '58, then I did
make a call in '59.
Q. Could you explain that? I'm not sure I understand.
A. It's possible that I didall in '58.
MR. WOLF: Off the record.
(Thereupon, a short discussion was had off the
record. )
MR. WOLF: On the record.
BY MR. WOU:
Q. As we were stating, Mr. Zoppi has told us and
written that to the best of his recollection, it was in
Decsnber of 1958 when he was supposed to come down to make
this review and, in fact, one of the reasons he did not go
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was he had another show in Las Vegas to review. That was
the reason he did not go down to Cuba with Jack Ruby. He
states that he intended going down after the review but did
not go down to Cuba because Castro took over. And that's
how he places the dates of Decesber 1958 because he's
certain that since Castro took over January 1# 1959, he then
did not go down.
A. Well, it's possible that I could have called in
'56. But I know I called in '59, too. But It's possible
but I 'm not sure.
Q. That's what we were asking before. The Foxes did
not approve Jack Ruby and Tony Zoppi coming down together
until 19597
A. The first time, it might have been '50, the latter
part of *58. I'm not positive on this. It's been so long,
it's been 20 years ago, you know. But Z did know that Z
called jack Ruby in '59 and he told me he would bring. Bony
Zoppi. He said, "Don't worry, Z 'll bring him down there."
How, it's possible that I did call him in *58, too, I donft
recall it.
Q, And Jack Rtaby, when he was in Cuba, was that be-
fore or after Castro took over?
A. jack Ruby«as in Cuba after Castro took over.
Q. And. to the best of your recollection, that was
August of 19597
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1 k. I'd have to say August. I'm not sura* though.
2 Q. I 'm saying though to the bast of your racollaction,
3 it was August?
4 A. I don ' t know .
5 Q. Subsaquant to your returning to the United States*
6 you were involved in an incident at Miami Airport* is that
7 correct?
8 A. That's right.
9 Q. And is it fair to characterise you as anti-
10 Castro?
11 A. I was in an outfit called Fair Play for Cuba. I'm
12 not very proud of it but I was just mad.
13 Q. It would be fair to characterise your political
14 philosophy as anti-Castro?
1'^ A. I wasn't trying to do anything. This fellow was
10 talking about the United States and President Eisenhower
n end different people and what a bum country it was in
10 America* it's liKky I didn't jump on him there because if
Id I had I would have been in jail but I wanted until I got to
^ the States. I called the FBI and I explained it to them.
'1 He was a school teacher up in Chicago.
^ Q. Subsequent to your return to the united States*
wers you ever approaOhed by any individuals regarding
-4 assassinating Fidel Castro?
A. Oh* Ood, no, of course not.
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Q. Did you «ver discuss the political situation
in Cuba with any individuals?
A. Nobody. It was a very dangerous thing to even
tallc to Cubans about Castro or anybody else.
Q. Even in the United States?
A. In the United States?
Q. I *m saying subsequent to your return frosi Cuba,
not while you were in Cuba but subsequent.
A. While I was in Cvd>a?
Q. After you left Cuba and came back to the United
States .
A. I would rib Cubans about Castro being a CoesDuniet
and things like that.
Q. Was that here in the United States?
A. in the United States.
Q. Which Cubans?
A. I don't know, ^uet anyone I *d see, viva ridel,
rib then. That's what they all said when Castro got there.
Q. Do you know Mr. Jerry Patrick Heeaiiing?
A. Who?
Q. Jerry Patrick Heoning, H-e-«-«-i-n-g.
A. Ho.
Q. You stated you knew Mr. Mike McLaney?
A. Very well.
Q. HOW did you know Mr. McLaney?
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A. I met Mr. McLaney at the« I met him yeara ago
in Miami. He had a restaurant in Miami. I met him one
night in there. I mas at the races.
Q. Was that before or after —
A. (interrupting) This was in the early '40*s«
'46 or '47. He had a restaurant called Liaglan, i don't
know how to spell it, a French restaurant. I was introduced
to him.
Q. Did you meet Mr. McLaney while you were in Cuba?
A. I met him in Miami first. The next time I saw
Mr. McLaney, just introduction, my name, his name, he
probably forgot about it. The next time, when I went to
Cuba, he had the National Hotel. I used to go over and
wisit with him, you Icnow, like you visit with people.
Q. Did you have dinner with him occasionally?
A. I don't think I ever did have dinner with him, no.
I'd just go overand say hello. And then i worked for McLaney
in Haiti, too. Porta prince, Haiti. I stayed down there
nine months.
Q. What period of time did you work in Haiti?
A. 1975, I believe. I didn't stay but nine months.
I got sick dcwn there.
Q. Did you know Mr. McLaney 's brother?
A. Oh, yeah, a very good friend of mine, Bill.
Q. How did you know Bill?
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A. I met Bill in Cuba.
Q. I8 that the first tine you had net hin?
A. The first tine Bill, yeah.
Q. After you left Cuba, did you continue to nalntain
a friendship with him?
A. Oh, sure, we're still friends.
Q. Bow often would you see him after you left Cuba
or speak to him?
A. After I left Cuba?
^ Tes.
A. I never saw him again until I went to Baiti.
Bo, I worked for him at the Carousel here. Th^ owned the
Carousel, McLaneys.
Q. Was that in Nevada, Cal^eva?
A. Ho, didn't I tell you about the Carousel Club?
I gave you a resume of every place I %#orked.
NR. PURDY: You're talking about the Carousel in
Las Vegas?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
BY MR. WOIP:
Q. And they own that club?
A. They own that.
Q. What did Bill HcLaney do in Ctdaa?
A. With his brother, I don't know what he did. Belped
with the casino, I guess.
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Q. Did they own it jointly?
A. I ha^e no idea how they owned it.
Q. Did you ever discusa political attitudes toward
Castro with the McZ^neys?
A. Never, hwi no reason to.
Q. After your return to the United States, did the
McLaneys ever discuss their attitude toward Castro?
A. Never, never mentioned Castro to me.
Q. Were you aware that the McLaneys were involved
in anti -Castro activities after their return to the united
States?
A. No.
Q. You never heard that before today?
A. Never heard it. I think I read it in a book, too.
Q. But you were not aware of that?
A. No.
Q. When was the first time ^at you became aware of
John: Bos el li 's or Sam Giancanoa^s efforts to assassinate
Fidel Castro?
A. About what?
Q. About John Roselli 's or Sam Giancana's efforts to
assassinate Fidel Castro.
A. Read it in the papers.
Q. You had never heard of it before that?
A. Never .
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Q. Do you )cnow Mr. Frank Sturgia?
A. No.
Q. Rave you ever heard of Mr. Sturgis?
A. I've read books about him.
Q. A Mr . Frank
A. No; 1 read in the books « though* that he was in
Castro's army. That's Sturgis* too* isn't it?
Q. Do you know Mr. Richard Danner* D*a-n-n-e-r?
A. Mr. Danner used to be an FBI man in Dallas.
Q. HOW did you first meet Mr. Danner?
A. 1 don't recall. It seems like he was looking for
some— I don 't recall how I met him but 1 did meet him one
time.
Q. Just one time?
A. That's all. I've seen him here.
Q. That was in Dallas?
A. one time here is all I've seen him.
Q. Did you ever see Mr. Danner in Cuba?
A. Never .
Q. You only saw Mr. Danner one time in Las Vegas?
A. 1 went in thereto look for a job.
Q. Do you remember where when you say you went in
there?
A. The Frontier. He was working for Suma* you*know*
he's the general manager of the Sands and at that time they
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didn’t need anyone.
Q. You never discuesed with Nr. Danner Mr. Roselli
or Mr. Giancana, did you?
A. Of couree not. I didn’t Jcnoif thoae people.
Q. Do you know Mr. E. Howard Hunt?
A. The one that was in Watergate?
Q. Yes.
A. No.
Q. You never met him?
A. NO , s ir .
Q. Did anyone ever approach you after your return to
the United States about getting involved in a plot to kill
Fidel Castro?
A. No, sir.
Q. When the Bay of Pigs invairasion occur esd, do you
remember where you were?
A. I was at my mother’s home in Ccral Gables, Florida.
Q. Had you been living in Florida?
A. I went there from Cuba. I stayed there until
June 1st and then went to work in the cal-HHeva Lodge.
Q. It was fairly common knowledge around Miami at
that time that a large invasion was about to occur. Were
you ware of that fact?
A. NO, sir, 1 wasn’t.
Q. YOU were not aware of that fact?
35-379 0 - 79-10
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A. I might have heard ruaors, but I didn*t pay any
attention to it because I didn't think it was true. There
was a possibility that it was true but I didn't think' so.
Q. When Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, where
were you at that tine?
A. Sir?
Q. Where ware you when jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey
Oswald?
A. I was working at the Thunderbird Hotel.
Q. And what was your reaction when you heard the
news?
A. Where was I when it happened?
Q. When it happened.
A. I was at hone. We've got a TV in the kitchen.
My wife was up early and I was working night, and she came
running in the bedroom and said, "Cone in the kitchen,
somebody just shot Oswald.'* And I jokingly said, **Well, I
hope I don't know who did it", just joking. At first they
said a man named Siegal, I think they said. Then a imt
minutes later they said, ”We made a terrible mistake. The
man's name is Jack Ruby." Well, I like to fell out. 1 told
my wife, 1 said, "Margaurita , the FBI will probably come
here to see me today or tomorrow.” And she said, **Why?”
I said, "well, I knew this man in Dallas." And
sure enough in about three hours, the kids and 1, I forgot
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What was going on this day, could it have been posaihle
that the funeral df President Kennedy was going on thac
day? There was some carenony in the rotunda, we were
watching it on the TV, the two kinds and myself and my
wife. About three hours later there was a knock on the
door and my some, he waa about six years old, went to the
door and said, "Dad, two men want to see you." Well, 1
didn't want the ki^s to hear him. 1 just took them in the
kitchen and shut the door and that's whexewe talked.
Q. Do you know how the FBI got to your house so
quickly?
A. No, I don't know . it waa a mystery to me. I don't
know how they got there that quick. I'd say it waa about
three or four hours they were there.
Q. Did you call any of your friends or associates
right after you had heard that jack Ruby—
A. (Interrupting) No.
Q. DO you know, to your knowledge, did anybody hire
Jack Ruby to kill Lee Harvey Oswald?
A. Do what, sir?
Q. Did anybody hire jack Ruby to kill Lee Harvey
Oswald?
A. Sure not. It's like I've told everybody that has
been questioning, I've been questioned by reporters and
everything, I think he did it just to — are you all listening
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to me? I think he did it juet to make a big man out of
himself. He was that type of a person.
BY MR. PORDY:
Q. After the assassination and after the shooting of
Oswald, did you discuss Jack Ruby with anyone other than
your wife and the FBI agents?
A. I don't know, i don't think so. I didn't want
anybody to know i even knew him, to tell you the truth.
Q. Did you discuss *:^ck Ruby with anyone who already
knew that you had known Jack Ruby?
A. Who?
Q. Did you talk to anyone who knew Jack Ruby and who
knew that you knew him after this happened?
A. Ho.
Q. After the assassination.
A. Mo, I don't think so.
Q. You haven't talked about jack Ruby with any
mutual acquaintances, then?
A. Ho; I might have said something about, what do you
think about that nut doing what he did or something like
that. I didn't want people to know. It was embarrassing
to me when I was working for the FBI to come in and take
me off to the side. Like I say, I asked them to see me at
home and they did.
Q. Did you know Juan Orta?
A. Who?
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Q. Juan Orta, 0-r-t-a.
A. No.
Cuban? I don't racall his nana.
Q. Did you )uiow William E. Fletchar of N€M York City?
A. Yea, I've known him for years. Re's from Dallas,
an oilman.
Q. HOW did you know him?
A. 1 met him around Dallas.
Q. Did he gan^le with any of the other oilmen?
A. There were two Fletchers. Is he the oilman you're
apeakix^ of? His brother was a gambler .
Q. What was the gambler's first name?
A. I can't think of his first name but there were
two brothers and I knew both of them.
Q. The Fletcher brothers.
A. The Fletcher brothers. In fact, one of them is
dead.
Q. Did JUck Ri4>y know either of the Fletchers?
A« Jack Ruby, I wouldn't think so.
Q. Did you know Raymond B. Cortez?
A. Ho.
Q. Did you know Henry Savadra, a former employee of
the Capri in Cuba?
A. Henry Sevaadra, he was a cashier there, I believe.
Q, Did jack Ruby see him when he came to CiA>a?
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A. No, he %#ouldn *t have any reason to see him.
Q. Did you Icnow David ElatJcin in Cuba?
A. Who?
0. E-l-a-t“k-i-n.
A. Ho.
Q. Did you know Robert Larkin?
A. Robert Larkin, sure I know him. He's a security
guard. Re worked for Abe Weinstein. He's a bouncer.
Q. Did he use to nanage the Vegas Club a: work with
Jack Ruby with the Vegas Club?
A. I don't think he did. i don't believe he ever
worked for jack Ruby. 1 think he worked for Weinstein.
He'i working as a security guard here in the PresK^nt Hotel*
he was the last l heard of hi».
Q. Do you think he knew Jack Ruby?
A. Did he knew Jack Ruby? Yes, he knw him.
Q. Did Mr. I*arkin ever gamble in Dallas?
A. 1 never saw him gamble anywhere* no. 1 don't
think he made enough money to gamble. Bob Larkin, that's who
you're talking about.
Q. Earlier you mentioned an Oscar Cheninder.
A. Cheninder .
Q. Could you SBoll that name for us?
A. I couldn't spell it. C-h-e-m-i-n-d-e-r . He's
dead, too, though •
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Q. I b«ll«ve you previously ststod thst vhsn jSck
Ruby esae to Cubs thst thst vss the first tiao he'd gone
to Cubs, is thst correct?
A. Thst 's ehst he ssid. I’ve never seen hia before.
Be hsd never been there when I ess there.
Q. Did he go to Cubs sfter thst?
A. 1 wouldn’t know. I’d hsve no esy of knowing. I
never ssw hia, when i esae throu^ Dsllss thst tlae. I
don’t think he did. The ril even ssked me if he’d been
here. I’ve never seen hia out here.
Q. Do you hsve peroonsl knowledge ss to whether or
not Jsck Ruby went to Cubs in Septesber of 1959 for one
dsy?
A. HO.
Q. Do you believe you would hsve known if he hsd?
A. I would hsve known it, I believe. I believe he
would hsve celled ae. Csn’t they look up the sirline tickets
end check it out?
Q. Did Jsck Ruby visit the prison when he wss in
Cubs?
A. I reslly don’t know. It’s possible he could
hsve but I don’t think. If he did, he went with ae snd X
don’t recsll it but he could hsve. I don’t know for sure.
Q. Tou ssid you thought it wss possible thst soaeone
hsd gone to the prison with you.
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A. It's possible that it might have been jack Ruby.
Q. Did 4ie person who went to the prison with you apeak
to anyone that was in the prison?
A. Just to this Degeorge and I spoke to Dino and
jake Lansky.
Q. Did you say hello to Ttafficante there?
A. Just said hello. But I talked to Jake because
Dino was a friend of mine. I mean not a persoi^l, intimate
friend. I used to go down and visit him when he was
working. Sometimes he*d drop by and see me.
Q. After you left Cuba, how did you get a job in
Nevada?
A. I got a job in Nevada through a friend of mine
named johnny Blaine. He was a book maker years ago. Be
called me and ahked me if I wanted to go up to Cal-Neva
Lodge. Be said I could go up there and see Sandy Waterman.
He used to manage a casino. I went up there. The 15th of
June I went up there.
Q. Did Mr. Blaine have anything to do with the Cal-
Neva Lodge?
A. Mo, he didn't. Be knew Sandy Waterman from old
days or something.
NR. WOLFi Mr. McWillie, that's the conclusion
of our questions. If. you have anything to add that would
help the Conaittee, we would be most appreciative.
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rSE WITNESS: I don't )uicm what I could tell
you because, like I said, all the contact I had with Ruby
was about the union thing. I don't even reraenber^ ^hen it
was, in *63. It must have been the early part .of *63.
I know that whoever Bill Miller did call and to this day
he don *t talk to me any more becaaee I had Ruby call him.
I had no idea Ruby was like he was,
MR. WOUF: Do you have anyone else you could
suggest we should talk to?
THE WITNESS: The only ones I could suggest are
those two fellows I named. They were very close with him
in Dallas. They were Rifkin and Panits.
MR. WOlf : They're both dead.
THE WITNESS: They died a couple of years ago.
They were just friends of his. Nobody ever dreamed in the
world this man would do anything like this. He was just a
harmless fellow. I don’t know what to tell you. I can't
tell you anything else. I've told the truth, everything
I've told you. But I did leave out the thing about Zoppi
with; the FBI: I'm sorry I did but I just forgot it. I was
shook up that I knew this fellow.
MR. WOUF: Mr. McWillie, we very much appreciate
your cooperation. This transcript will be typed up and
sent to us in Washington. We will then send you a copy of
it for you to: read. There will be a little statement at thei
150
•nd for you to sign that it*a an accurate and true account.
If you vant to make changee in the tranecript, you should
get in touch vith me. I'll send you a cover letter with the
transcript .
1HE WITNESS! I don 't have either one of your
NR. WOLF: We* II leave a card with you. If you
get in touch with us, we'll send you a statement to sign.
If you sign that and return it to us# then we'll send you
an official copy of your transcript so you'll have one for
yoi 2 T own records.
Thank you very much. That will conclude the
deposition .
Subscribed and sworn to before me this
My commission will expire
day of
Notary l\iblic
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United States of America, )
(
State of Nevada, ) ss.
(
City of Las Vegas, )
I, Joseph L. Ward, U. S, Magistrate, do certify
that, pursuant to notice, there came before me, in Room
4-003» Federal Courthouse, 210 Las Vegas Boulevard, in Las
Vegas, State of Nevada, Lewis J. McWillie, vrtio was by me
duly sworn to testify the vrtiole truth of his knowledge touch-
ing the matter herein; that he was examined and his examina-
tion at the time reduced to writing in Stenotype by Naomi
Bolstad and that such examination has been correctly trans-
cribed and is fully and accurately set forth in the 136 pre«-
ceding pages; that the deposition is a true record of the
testimony given by the witness, that his said deposition so
given was by said witness subscribed and sworn to; that said
deposition was taken on the day, between the hours and at
the place in that behalf aforesaid, and that said deposition
is now herewith returned.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand at
my office in this day
of 1978.
138
United States of America, )
State of Nevada, ) ss.
(
City of Las Vegas. )
I, Naomi Bolstad, do certify that I accurately
and correctly reported in Stenotypy the complete proceed-
ings had in the taking of the deposition of Lewis J. McWil-
lie, and have accurately and correctly transcribed the same
in the preceding 13 6 pages .
Naomi Bolstad, Court Reporter
152
JFK Exhibit F-573
'.iVA3,3J tn»/.
) ■ “ /
'1
\^rEOERAL BUREAU OF INYESTJGA\^
Bub/, Jnck
0. .
.
I
Dot* -
^ w*rrT*rt> ^ v _ . ^ ^ J _
LEv:iS J. lie WILLIE, 3627 Eastern, Las Vegas,
kevada, was interviewed on November 25, 1963. MC WILLIB,^
frormarly woriced ior FK^LJSSQlDSnNG * at the •To n of the Hill’*.""*
[C lub betw een Dallas and Ft. Worth., Texas, la Tarrant C ounty >
T his \Y as_an illegal fframbllng* operation Avher e he wor ked.
[d uring t he 1940 *s, Ee stated that he has knowa“TTKCK .RUEV '
since .1947 or 194&, and that RUBY formerly-* operated . the^iii'.y. *
[yegas Clu' and now also operates, the Carrousel -Club • la*
Dallas. Be said that he has known RUBY for somewhere *
between 15 and 20 years, first getting acquainted with
bin la Dallas, but knew him only as an operator of a ;
night club. Ee stated that to his /knowledge, RUBY has ? ‘
never been Involved in any other kind of enterprise,
- and to his knowledge no one else was associated v/ltb him ** •
in the .Vegas. Club. He said that as far as he. knew', RUBY,
operated this establishment within the law and was hot v
known to him to be lnvolved>^ln gambling, prostitution,
. or illegal liquor sales. He said that he did know that'*^
RUBY. had cone to Dallas from Chicago, but dlBT'nbt'TKhow
of any particular associates of~RUBY. He said RUBY b ad
v isited the Top of*the Hil l, but was no t a freQuent~vlsi tor.
there. Re said h e'"^uid^ h;{,nk that. RUBY— pro bab ly knew
most of the members. of._ the Dallas-PoX ice Deparf^e trtr; * u.
simply because of the typo of. establishment that he ran,
but felt that this, would be the o nly basis of ^^ny . * -
association v /lth the Da llas jpol lce Departmenif^^i nce ho •
ferr~tfia~C tho operati o n was a lega lT^hdT" *
UC WILLIE said that he had gone to Cuba to work
at the Tropicana in Havana, Cuba, and while tb«re sometime
in 1959, RUBY had been in Cuba for about a ^.one week's,,
vacation and be bad seen RUBY there at that time. Uo' said
he know -of no interests RUBY night have bad In Cuba.
lie VrlLLIS said that be returned from Cuba on . .
January 2, 1961, on the same. plane which carried, some other '
passengers, at least one of whom expressed a dislikb ' ^
for President EISENHOWER and America's, actions in regards
• 0.1 11/25/63 ^^ Las Vegas, Nevada Pil, jf LV -44-4S
l,/ _t:.s LSO A. STH^/SI'-S fc E. SALISS’JBY n„,. il/26/63
js.lt ^ — :
Cocjir.^nt cantcin. h.:i}i»r m r;>-.:n.ndollons noi co^rlu.lon. o( t)i. FDS. It t* l>«* i.rofM.-ty ol tb. FOI *n£ I. lo
»»ut Qi^7.c/: II and u. e«nt»nts Mtw not lo dl.lrlbul.-J oul.lJ. ro**r o^.ncr. - • * ■ , .
153
JjY
2
to Cuba and it was bis recollection that this ikdividual-'vfas
a msabsr of tho Fair Play *>r Cuba organization,' Eo stated
that he had becone highly incensed over the remarks this ^
individual nad© while waiting for the plane in Havana.
and during the travel to the! United States, but that he
had controlled his emotions concerning this man's remarks
urtil after the plane's arrival in Jliaini, whereupon he bad;
pl^y::ically attacked this individual because of the remarks
he had made concerning the United States, He said that ^
this matter received local publicity in Miami press and • .
that be was also interviewed by the Federal. Bureau of '
Investigation in lliani concerning this situation. Ho
stated that it would be his belief that JACK RUBY would
also be very much opposed to any such organization and
also pointed out that he had talked to. JACK RUBY following
this incident and RUBY had remarked to him that be had
done the right thing in attacking this roan.
Ho stated that he had correspondence with RXIB.Y ,
and maintained contact with him principally through' this* *
means and sometime in early; 1963 had felt that be needed
EOEi© type of protection around the bouse and bad requested
RUBY, believed by letter, to obtain a gun for bitn. ‘ He
stated be did not specify v/bat kind of gun he wanted but
that be had subsequently learned that a COD package awaited
him at the Post Office. He; stated that he had discussed
this matter with bis wife and they had decided not to
pick up the gun which bad been mailed from Dallas, Texas,
as they were afraid their children might find the gun. He
stated be was isure that this gun was sent to him through
RUBY’S efforts based upon his initial request. He stated
bo docs not know what disposition roigh.t have been made
of the gun, | •
I » • . . ;
' He said his last contacts with RUBY were about*
two months ago when RUBY contacted- him via telephone
concerning some trouble ho was havii^ with" a show* as a
result of which he referred- RUBY to MILLER) the owner
• of the Riverside Hotel in Reno,'v/bere MC T7ILLIK bad formerly
been Club Manager. .Tholr discussion on this occasion bad
to -do only with the club?Io act with which RUBY was conoernod
154
LV 44-6S
3
laC V/ILLIE said that slnco RDBY*s name bad first
come to his attention in connection with the killing of • *
OSV/ALD, he had searched his mind concerning aipdsslble* -
motive and had come to the conclusion in his own mind that
RUBY must have been brooding over the death of the
President and that this was an insane act on the part of
RUBY* He stated that he is certain in bis own mind that
RUBY has no underv/orld connections, although he might be
. acquainted with some figures in gambling and other Illegal
activities and stated that the only person that he could
suggest who might be on a more intimate basi^ with RXJBY
other than the members of the Immediate family, was a girl
ho went with in Dallas, Texas, for about four years by the • '
name of ALICE. . . -
j ; . ■
He stated be has never kno\7n RUBY to visit Las*
Vegas and is certain that if RUBY did he would ^lave been
in contact with him, ns RUBY knows where he works and bow
to contact him. He also feels that their acquaintance is
such that RUBY would not pass through Las Vegas without being* ■-*
in touch v/lth him. He stated be does not know RUBY to
have ever been involved in any bookie activity, or in any
gambling of any nature other than as a player, **
* t/ , .
MC WILLIE advised that ELAINE MYNIEB is a Dallas
girl who worked at the Avis Rental in the Dallas Airport !
Terminal Building and is acquainted with RUBY. He X'ecalled .
she visited Havana, and stayed for about two weeks. He . *
denied having used her as a' courier between RUBY and himself ,
explaining that there was no restriction at the time and bad •
be wanted to get a* message to RUBY, he would have telephoned
him. ^ .
c 6 .
155
JFK Exhibit F-574
FEDERAi- BUREAU OF I!^VESTIC■ATIO^' -
Dor* .Time 9> 1 D&4
i I
LKVIS J. HC WILLIE yas interviewed at his residence,
3627 Eastern Avenue and advised as follows:
He went to Cuba in September, 19S8, and immediately
"^went to work at the Tropicana Casino, remaining there as maaa,;e;
until May, 1960, after which he left and worked at the Cdori
Hotel-Casino from May, 1960, to January 2, -1961, as a pttbb^^.
- He stated the Tropicaaa was Cuban owned and that he did <*ot'
know the owner of the Capri, but that he worked under ono
. : ANGELO D1 CHSISTOPAIiO (Phonetic).
.. In 1959, date unrecalled, he wrote to RUBY and aske<
-7y. him if be would^'llke to come to Havana for a week* Ee stated
there was no ulterior motive and that he had been a close
ruby's J 9 dv^ext*ended this invitation as one would to
a brother. Be realized RUBY was working hard with his DaXlaS)
night club and felt that RUBY needed a rest. .Because the
cost of plane tickets in Havana could be paid for by pesos n
■j: for approximately 1/5 of a cost of a ticket in the United States,
v/ ha purchased a round trip ticket for RUBY at his own expense and'
mailed it to /RUBY in Pallas, after which RUBY boarded a plane and
- flew to Havana for a visit.
♦ s;
He arranged for RUBY to stay in a small hotel, about
three blocks from the Kacional Hotel, name unrecalled. RUBY,
during his stay in Havana, would come out to the Tropicana
where MC WILLIE was working from nine P.U. to two A.U., and
wait for UC HILLIE to get off duty, after which they would have
a fow drinks together. He does not know of any contacts made
by RUBY, if any, and believes that RUBY was sightseeing as
any othe^ tourist during his Cuban stay.
t* * .
• With regard to the relationship between CASTRO
supporters and the Havana gambling community, HC UlLLIE
advised that as soon as CASTRO came into power, all Americans
had to loave and that as far as he knows, prior to this time,
there was no understanding between representatives of the
gambling .industry and CASTRO* s supporters. He recalled
that as soon as CASTRO>took over, the hir,ed help, such as the
waiters, rebelled against casino management and American
own^ship was forced out of the gambling business. Prior to
o 6/8/64 „ La s Vevas, Nev a da J_ _ FiU f T.V 4 /1 ^4fL _ _ .
SA WILLIAM T. UC PAUL
SA LEO A,. STEVENS :LAS/bmr • C. -j 6/3/64
Sy : , ■■ ■ Dot# diciot#<] — -
7Str 4oewin.n: CMttotn. r.comm.ndotlsn. ftor conctu.lftn* of th. TPI* ll (a tHa #roF«Mr of !*•» TRi ofi4 U Joo..d lo
og.ncjr: It 0 »mI ll.,conl»nla or. not to b* il.trlbul.d ot»I»*<* ogancr. /7> . — ^
{ . 1 1 '•>. •
156
LV 44-4S
2
that time there had been only specuiatlon es to the fate of
^oabllDE: Interests should a chans:e in Government come
about but UC T7ILI»1S of no arrangements or liaison
between the gambling interests and CASTRO*
KC T7IIiLIS characterizes RXIB7 as being completely '
apolitical and to his knowledge has no connections with
the CASTRO or BATISTA supporters . Ho never heard RUBY
mention politics or any political connections except cn one
occasion in Balias. .UC TflLBlR indicated an acquaintance
with Congressman BRUCS AXjGER, either a Representative or
Senator from Texas, whose wife was a jmtron of RUBY's night
club. This acquaintance was nore social and personal than
political. Other than AIG3SR, HC VXhLXB knows RUBY to be
well acquainted with ylrtxially ©very officer of the Dallas
Police force and had an arrangemont whereby off duty police:;ien
were hired at RUBY*s expense to naintnln order in his night
club. Here again HC HXLbIB did not feel that RUBY's
acquaintance with police officers stemmed from political
interest but rather that RUBY had a genuine liking for law
enforeeaant officers. He also noted that RUBY is not a
gambler and does not know the gambling business, further
indicating to him* that RUBY had no motive In visiting Cuba
other than for a week of rest and relaxation.
Regarding prisoTiers of war, UC RXULIE stated
that he had not been imprisoned nor were any of his
•friends; however, he had heard that HARVjSY HARR, who
had worked at the Kaclonal Casino had been imprisoned
for a year after CASTRO took control. He has since
seen HARR in Las Vegxis but does not know his present
whereabouts. He stated HARR was arrested after he,
KC WILLIE, left Havana. HC UILLIB recalled that diplomatic
relations between Cuba and the United States were abrogated
on January 3, 1981, the day ^ter UC WILUIB left Cuba and
that HARE had remained ^in Cuba after HC T?ILLX5*s departure.
157
H© not know vby HABR was arrested but e.-Kpressed th-e
belief that all Americans who had not heeded a warnln£;
to leave Havana faced arrest. To his icaowXedge, HAHR
and HU3T are TQot acquainted, HC stated that he
personally left Havana to 'avoid arrest. He recalled a
Captain whom he had known casually Vho had been .
with CASTHO" in the mountains and whom he later under-
stood had been arrested'by CASTAO and put before a firlnfir
squad bscaUse he was not^ completely sympathetic vlth
CAS7“HO*s"'causo, He stated he does not ?£iiow a KOBKUT
HC
KC 7£LSjIS denxea that he had had any contact
with anyone: concerning eale of Jeeps or guns or the
smuggling .of refugees out of Cuba or release of any of
CAS^‘RO*s prisoners. He stated that likewise to his ’
knowledge * KXJBT had tak^n'no action in behalf of such
priBOners,'*' He did recall 'that RUBT kept a couple of
old guns at- his residence, * although he was not a gun
collector,*’* These were 'kept for his personal ’use aa
pirote<^tion against Intruders and not for any active
aggrefisli^e ‘use- to the best of his knowledge. He feels
certain ttsit RUB^T had no contact with any one interested
In the lialft of weapons br- Jeeps under any circumstances.
X?ith further regard to the air line ticket*
purcha«ed* by KC WXLl*XE/ ‘he stated that as best he can
recall, the* peso evaluation of this' ticket was about’
and* that* he had personally absorbed the cost,
Ke’ could not be certain" whether RUBY repaid him for
this ticket "after RUB? reached Havana, • again explaining
that he purchased the tlcke^ at Havana and mailed it
to BUB? at 1/5 .’of what it Would coat., RUBY to buy a
comparable .ticket in Dallas', ' He ’.does not recall standing
any other ezp'andes for RU3'&’ In’ conneo'tlon with the trip
and Was unable to state ’whether .RUB? had repaid him for
the cost of the ticket or not, .
f
;0v*
35-379 0-79
11
158
LV
4
HC UX^^ZK did not see or hear from RUBT* after
HC WILi-IS oretorned to the United States except that *ln
June > 1951^ -MC WII-LIS^ then in Florida, obtained employment
a,t hake Tahoe, Kevada, and en route from Uiaml to hake
Tahoe stopped in Balias where he stayed over night in RUBy^s
apartment,:. He saw RUBT" only for about two or three hours
on this occasion, during which time RUBY did not express any
interest in politics or any other, item of significance,
concersation centering around their personal lives and RUBY’S *
night club operation as separated from any political matters*
Concerning more recent contacts, MC T?IhhI£ stated
he cannot be certain whether he wrote or called RUBY from
has Vegas to Balias,* Texas, reexuestlng RUBY to obtain a
pistol; Be ^tstted he knew RUBY could obtain a weapon in
Balias, probably more reasonably . than t!C TfILhIB could procure
one in 'has Vagas and that he had asked RUBY to* send a weapon
to him» He 'knows BUBY 'caused a weapon to 'be sent to him
■‘s he % 7 as hotitied of a parcel at the post office but' that he •
.id not v/ant'to'go to the post office .and pick it up' and
let it reiurh to the dealer without* ever seeing the weapon
or taking it cyt of the post office.
He also believes RUBY called him at the Thunderbird
Hotel -Casino where 'HC WlhhXK is employed regarding some union
trouble RUBY was having In Balias and requesting HC WILhIE
put him in touch with someone who could help him- in this
natter. HC contacted BXU* MIIXER who formerly operated
the Riverside Hotel at -Reno, Nevada, and believes he nay have
called RUBY back from -his, HC WlhLXE’s, residence ‘advising
P.USY to contact UXhLER,; 'He believes BUBY later called
hid backV npt recalling whe.th»2r at the hotel. or his residence,
advising 'HC WILLIE that he'^was going , to New York to meet -
with ..tho AGVA (AmeidLcon’ 'Cutl'd- of Variety . Ar ti s ts> r president •
He believes that^iTOBY* later sen tT him a ^'post card ^^-from* New ,
York' stating '"that be.; had met 'the >4>VA president and had
ironed out. ail his troubles, V tv- . ' *
I .« . ^ . ' •*!. -
159
LV 44-48
6
He stated he does not recall over calling: RVBY
jfroia the Thunderblrd Hotel because of the complications,
of billing his personal calls through the hotel switch-
bo^d'and that ho definitely did not call from any of tha
Thunderblrd pay stations* He stated that when he called
RUBY, the call was on his residence phone and that he can
recall no phone calls other than those mentioned above*
* He stated he has bad no contact with RUBY since
the assassination of President KENNEDY and could not have .
anticipated RUBY*s killing of. OSWALD* He stated he had had.
no contact with BTOY’s attorneys but that a reporter ^had ‘
called him from Dallas regarding the sale of arms and'
Jeeps to CASTRO *s Interests* He stated that took place
during the RUBY trial -and that while he did not relish the
thought of talking to a reporter, he very truthfully replied
to this inquiry that he did not know what the reporter was
talking about. • -
In siuomation, MC WXI«LI£ stated that his association
with RUBY was strictly social and personal without any
intertwined business interests or gambling interests, knowing
that RUBY is not a gambler and does not understand the
gambling business. He did not know of Any political
Interests or activities on RUBY'S part nor of any particular
affinity RUBY might have for former President KENNEDY, He
stated ho can only assume in retrospect from his knowledge
of RUBY'S personality that RUBY felt he would become a
national hero by exterminating President KENNEDY'S assassin*
Of\ 11'^!
160
Mr. Purdy. Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions at this
time.
Mr. Preyer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Stokes to question the
witness for such times as he may consume.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. McWillie, when did you first move to
Cuba?
Mr. McWillie. Sir?
Chairman Stokes. When did you first move to Cuba?
Mr. McWillie. I believe it was September 1968, I believe.
Chairman Stokes. How long was it before you obtained employ-
ment in Cuba?
Mr, McWillie. I had employment when I went to Cuba.
Chairman Stokes. And where were you employed in Cuba?
Mr. McWillie. The Tropicana Night Club.
Chairman Stokes. In what capacity?
Mr. McWillie. Casino manager.
Chairman Stokes. And who had arranged your employment
when you went there?
Mr. McWillie. A fellow that I had met in Dallas. I don't remem-
ber exactly how I met him. He asked me about if I had been in the
gambling business and I said yes, and he said, well, maybe I can
get you something in Havana.
Can you hear me, sir?
Chairman Stokes. Yes; I can.
Mr. McWillie. So, a week later I did hear from him and he had
asked me if I would like to manage the Tropicana. He thought he
could get me a job there. I went over there and had a conference
with the owners there and agreed to come back a week later, and
then I went back to Dallas and returned to Havana.
Chairman Stokes. Who were the owners that you had the confer-
ence with?
Mr. McWillie. Owners of the Tropicana?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, sir.
Mr. McWillie. There was a fellow named Martin Fox, Pedro
Fox, Oscar Cheminder. That's all, the only ones I know. They are
all Cubans.
Chairman Stokes. Were there any so-called silent partners?
Mr. McWillie. Silent partners?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, sir.
Mr. McWillie. I wouldn't think so.
Chairman Stokes. How many other major casinos were in Cuba
at that time?
Mr. McWillie. Let me see. I'd say six, maybe.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us the names of those casinos?
Mr. McWillie. Well, the Riviera, the Capri, National, the Hilton.
There was one down in old Havana. I don't really recall the name
of it, but I do know the man's name who ran it, it was Batista. He
wasn't any kin to
Chairman Stokes. To the President?
Mr. McWilue. To the President.
Chairman Stokes. To others you just named for us, can you tell
us who the owners were of those?
Mr. McWillie. I have no idea, sir, who they all are.
161
Chairman Stokes. Just the one you are aware of, besides Tropi-
cana.
Mr. Me Willie. Sir?
Chairman Stokes. Besides the Tropicana, you are just aware
Mr. McWillie. That's the only one I was aware of.
Chairman Stokes. Are you aware of any individuals who might
have had ownership interest in more than one casino?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir, no way I would know that.
Chairman Stokes. Did you know whether or not Santos Traffi-
cante had an interest in any casino there?
Mr. McWillie, No, sir, I didn't.
Chairman Stokes. Did Jack Ruby know the Fox brothers that
you just mentioned?
Mr. McWillie. Did he know what, sir?
Chairman Stokes. Did he know the Fox brothers?
Mr. McWillie. I think I introduced Jack to them when he came
out to the place while he was there.
Chairman Stokes. But he didn't know them prior to your intro-
ducing them?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. I see. At some time, did you change jobs and
move to the Capri Casino?
Mr. McWillie. Yes; I did. I managed the Tropicana some time
and then the government took it over and I was sent up there by
Martin who said you can get a job up there; go up there.
Chairman Stokes. Who is Martin?
Mr. McWillie. He owned the Tropicana, Martin Fox,
Chairman Stokes. Then he sent you to the Capri; is that right?
Mr. McWillie. Right.
Chairman Stokes. When was this?
Mr. McWillie. Either early 1960's or the late 1950's; I don't
know which. I don't recall.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us who owned the Capri?
Mr. McWilue. No; I didn't know.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know whether or not Santos Traffi-
cante had an interest in the Capri?
Mr. McWilue. If he did, I never did see him in there.
Chairman Stokes. If I said to you that the FBI files which this
committee has gotten hold of in the case indicates that Santos
Trafficante had substantial interest in the Capri, would your
answer still be the same?
Mr. McWillie. That he had a substantial interest in the Capri?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, sir.
Mr. McWillie. I don't know about that, sir.
Chairman Stokes. You know nothing about it?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir. There would be no way I would know who
owned the place.
Chairman Stokes. During the time you were in Cuba, can you
tell us what was the relationship between the casino operators and
the Cuban Government?
Mr. McWillie. None that I know of sir.
Chairman Stokes. Were there contacts between the casino
owners and the government officials?
162
Mr. McWillie. Not that I know of, sir. There would be no way I
would know that. All I did was manage the casino; they didn't
discuss their private business with me.
Chairman Stokes. Well, prior to Castro coming into power, are
you aware of whether or not casino operators had to make payoffs
to individuals in the government in order to remain in business?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir, I don't.
Chairman Stokes. In 1959, did individuals who had casino inter-
ests take special precautions to avoid confiscation of their assets by
the government?
Mr. McWillie. Not that I know of.
Chairman Stokes. Well, isn't it true that you made trips to
Miami?
Mr. McWillie. To take money for Fox
Chairman Stokes. From Cuba to deposit money?
Mr. McWilue. Yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Explain that to us, tell us what you were
doing.
Mr. McWilue. They would ask me to, if I would go to Miami and
deposit some money for them, and I would do it.
Chairman Stokes. By what you were doing, you were sort of
running for them, is that right?
Mr. McWilue. Well, I was a casino manager, and if they wanted
me to do that for them, I did it.
Chairman Stokes. The effect of what they were doing is they
were getting their money out of Cuba into banks or deposit boxes
here in the States, is that right?
Mr. McWilue. Well, the money I took over there was — I took it
to a teller and she put it in their account.
Chairman Stokes. In the bank?
Mr. McWilue. In the bank; yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Was this for the Fox brothers?
Mr. McWilue. This was both the Fox brothers and Cheminder,
too. Cheminder was one of the partners.
Chairman Stokes. Did you do it for anyone else?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. How about when you moved to the Capri, did
you do it for anybody there?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Following the takeover by Castro, did a point
come when some of the Americans living there were put in prison
or otherwise detained?
Mr. McWilue. I think so; yes.
Chairman Stokes. Can you recall about when this was?
Mr. McWilue. Why, you say?
Chairman Stokes. No; can you recall when this occurred?
Mr. McWilue. When this occurred? Either the latter part of
1959 or the early part of 1960; I'm not sure.
Chairman Stokes. Were all Americans who had gambling inter-
ests there detained?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know why some were detained and
some were not?
Mr. McWillie. I never did know; no.
163
Chairman Stokes. And do you know where they were detained?
Mr. McWillie. Yes; they were detained in two prisons, Principal
and another one, I don^t know the name of that one. That's the one
they were detained in.
Chairman Stokes. Would that be Trescornia, a place called Tres-
cornia?
Mr. McWillie. I think that's the name of it; yes.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us the names of some of the
people whom you know were detained?
Mr. McWillie. I didn't understand you.
Chairman Stokes. Are you having difficulty hearing me?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, sir; it is alright, I can hear you.
Chairman Stokes. Can you hear me now?
Mr. McWillie. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. Can you give us the names of some of the
people who were detained?
Mr. McWilue. In this prison?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, sir.
Mr. McWilue. Well, Trafficante was in there, Jake Lansky, Dino
Cellini, and a fellow named Guiseppe who worked in the Capri, had
worked in there, and I don't recall anyone else.
Chairman Stokes. Was anyone from the Tropicana detained in
there?
Mr. McWillie. Was anyone besides Tropicana?
Chairman Stokes. No; anyone from the Tropicana?
Mr. McWillie. From the Tropicana; no.
Chairman Stokes. How about the Fox brothers, were they de-
tained?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us why they were not detained?
Mr. McWillie. I really couldn't tell you, sir. I don't know. I guess
because they were Cubans, I don't know.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever have occasion to visit Trescor-
nia?
Mr. McWilue. I went out there to see a fellow named Guiseppe.
He had been a dealer around the Capri and he was a fanatic
gambler, gambled his money away. He had a wife and a little kid.
We used to give his wife, take up a collection and give his wife
money so they could live. I did go out to see him once or twice.
Chairman Stokes. What was his full name?
Mr. McWillie. I really don't remember it, sir. Guiseppe De some-
thing. I don't recall what it was. Guiseppe De George.
Chairman Stokes. I am sorry.
Mr. McWilue. Guiseppe De George.
Chairman Stokes. De George.
Mr. McWillie. Yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you recall how many times you went out
there? I think you just said once or twice
Mr. McWilue. I would say about twice.
Chairman Stokes. Do you recall the first time that you went
there?
Mr. McWilue. No, I don't recall the date; no.
Chairman Stokes. Can you approximate the date for us?
164
Mr, McWillie. I believe it was some time in 1959. Tm not posi-
tive though. Could have been early 1960's; Tm not sure.
Chairman Stokes. How about the second time you went back to
visit De George?
Mr. McWillie. It is possible I could have went back to see Dino
the second time, but Fm not sure.
Chairman Stokes. To see who?
Mr. McWillie. Dino Cellini. He had been the manager of the
Tropicana before Clark was there. And I became friendly with him
and talked to him about casino work and different things. Its
possible that I did go see him; I don^t know.
Chairman Stokes. So that I understand your testimony properly,
it is that you went there twice. You think it was late 1959 or early
1960, possibly. The first time you went to see De George. The
second time you may have gone to see Cellini; is that correct?
Mr. McWillie. It is possible that I went to see both of them.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us why De George was in Tres-
cornia?
Mr. McWillie. They just picked him up like they did everybody
else. I don^t know why they picked him up.
Chairman Stokes. And what was your reason for going to see
him?
Mr. McWillie. See De George?
Chairman Stokes. Yes.
Mr. McWillie. Because he had a wife and a child and we had
been giving them money. I had rather, taken up a collection
amongst the help to live on. I went out there to let him know they
were being taken care of.
Chairman Stokes. Was Cellini in there the same time you went
to see De George?
Mr. McWillie. I think, Fm positive he was.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know what he was in for?
Mr. McWillie. Why he was in there?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, sir.
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. How many people were in the same area
where De George and Cellini were?
Mr. McWilue. Quite a few people there, Cubans and Americans
that I didn't know.
Chairman Stokes. Did they have them all housed together; that
is, did they have the Americans
Mr. McWilue. Well, it was a kind of a, I would say, a playroom
where they all sat around and read and talked, whatever.
Chairman Stokes. Well, in the room where you visited them?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Can you describe that room for us?
Mr. McWillie. As I recall, it was just a large room, had chairs in
it. It had a yard outside where they could walk around. It wasn't
really a prison. They had a wire fence around it. But, I guess it was
pretty well guarded.
Chairman Stokes. In this room where you visited with De
George and Cellini, were other people visiting in the same room
with prisoners?
165
Mr. McWillie. I don't recall, sir, I really don't know who was
visiting. It could have been
Chairman Stokes. Well, on your first trip, did you see both De
George and Cellini?
Mr. McWillie, It seems to me like I did; yes. I said hello to
Cellini; yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Is it your opinion that both of these men were
imprisoned because of their gambling activities or for some other
reason?
Mr. McWillie. I would have to think that they were trying,
going to deport them, myself.
Chairman Stokes. And do you know why they were being deport-
ed?
Mr. McWillie. Castro was taking over the casinos. I would think
that is one of his ways of doing things.
Chairman Stokes. And you think it would be in connection with
their gambling activities?
Mr. McWillie. I would think so; yes. Is it all right if I smoke?
Chairman Stokes. Certainly; help yourself.
On your first visit there, can you tell us the names of some of the
other prisoners you recall seeing there?
Mr. McWillie. Well, I recall seeing Trafficante. I recall seeing
Jake Lansky, Dino Cellini, and Guiseppe.
Chairman Stokes. And did you have occasion to talk with any of
them?
Mr. McWillie. I did talk to Cellini. I think Jake Lansky might
have been there. I didn't talk to anyone — and De George — I didn't
talk to Trafficante because I didn't know him that well, just to
speak to him.
Chairman Stokes. But you did talk, you think, with Jake Lansky
on that occasion?
Mr. McWilue. Just asked how he was, when he was going to get
freed, and different things like that.
Chairman Stokes. You say you did not talk with Mr. Traffi-
cante?
Mr. McWiuje. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Did you know Mr. Trafficante?
Mr. McWilue. Just to see him.
Chairman Stokes. And how often would you have seen him?
Mr. McWilue. Oh, maybe every once in a while. It might be a
month or so if I would see him. When I'd see him, I would say hello
to him, and he would say hello to me.
Chairman Stokes. On your second visit out there, besides the two
men that you have named, whom did you see on your second visit?
Mr. McWilue. The same ones were in there.
Chairman Stokes. And can you tell us on that occasion how
many of them you talked with?
Mr. McWillie. Just Guiseppe. I could have talked to Dino again
just to say hello and pass the time of day.
Chairman Stokes. Did you speak to Lansky?
Mr. McWilue. Yes, he's always with Dino. They were together.
Chairman Stokes. Do you recall speaking with Mr. Trafficante
on that occasion?
Mr. McWillie. I didn't know Mr. Trafficante that well.
166
Chairman Stokes. Have hou ever spoken to Mr, Trafficante?
Mr. McWillie. Just to say hello.
Chairman Stokes. Do you recall when that was?
Mr. McWillie. Sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you recall when that was?
Mr. McWillie. No, I don't Fd see him numerous times around
Havana.
Chairman Stokes. Do you recall whether you said hello to him in
the prison on either one of those occasions?
Mr. McWillie. I probably said hello to him the second time I was
there.
Chairman Stokes. Did you do anything else, shake hands with
him or an}rthing like that?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Probably just said hello.
Mr. McWillie. That's all.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, at this time I ask that JFK
exhibit F-436, which is a rough sketch of the layout of Trescornia,
obtained during a committee trip to Cuba, be entered into the
record.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibit F-436 is entered into
the record.
[The above referred to JFK exhibit F-436 follows:]
Chairman Stokes. Was someone in that prison by the name of
Charles Tourine?
Mr. McWilue. Who?
167
Chairman Stokes, Charles Tourine?
Mr. McWillie, No; I don't know.
Chairman Stokes. You don't know anybody by that name? How
about Charles Del Monico?
Mr. McWillie. Del Monico?
Chairman Stokes. Del Monico?
Mr. McWillie. No.
Chairman Stokes. Lucian Rivard?
Mr. McWillie. Not that I know of.
Chairman Stokes. Jake Lansky was there; right?
Mr. McWillie. Jake Lansky was there; right.
Chairman Stokes, How about Henry Savaadra?
Mr. McWillie. No.
Chairman Stokes. And Cellini was there?
Mr. McWillie. Cellini was there, yes, Eddie Cellini — I mean
Dino.
Chairman Stokes. Now, on your two visits there, on either one of
those visits, did either De George or Cellini or anyone else ask you
to do anything for them outside of the prison?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Who went out to the prison with you?
Mr. McWilue. Who what, sir?
Chairman Stokes. Who went out there with you to the prison?
Mr. McWilue. Jack Ruby could have been out there one time
with me. I don't think he was. I went out there, I think, by myself.
Chairman Stokes. Well, you said to us, you just said to us he
could have gone out there with me.
Mr. McWilue. I don't know if he was there at that time or not.
If he was, I could have taken him out there with me, yes. I'm not
positive about it.
Chairman Stokes. Let's talk about Mr. Ruby a little bit. When
was Mr. Ruby there?
Mr. McWilue. Sir?
Chairman Stokes. When did Mr.Ruby come to Cuba?
Mr. McWilue. I don't know; it was August or September; I don't
know.
Chairman Stokes. Of what year?
Mr. McWillie. 1959.
Chairman Stokes. And tell us why he came to Cuba?
Mr. McWilue. Well, he came over there — I tried to get Mr. Ruby
to bring a columnist from Dallas over there in 1958, and so he
didn't bring him, he couldn't bring him or something. I don't know
what it was. In 1959, I called him again. I believe I called him or
wrote him and asked him if he could possibly bring Tony Zoppi in.
He said yeah, I will get him and bring him over here. I explained
to him that his hotel bill and plane fare would be taken care of. In
fact, I sent him two tickets; I am almost positive it was two tickets.
When he came over there, he was by himself. He said, Tony
couldn't come. I think he just more or less came over there to take
a vacation. Course, I never heard from Tony again.
Chairman Stokes. So that we understand it. Jack Ruby came to
Cuba at your invitation?
Mr. McWillie. Yes, he did.
168
Chairman Stokes. And you are the one who sent him the tick-
ets?
Mr. Me Willie. But he was supposed to bring Tony Zoppi, ex-
columnist.
Chairman Stokes. But instead of bringing Zoppi
Mr. McWillie. He came by himself; yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes, In order to try and get a better idea of when
Ruby was there, what is your best recollection as to whether it was
August or whether it was September or whether he came in
August and left in September?
Mr. McWillie. He was just there a week, 6 days, maybe.
Chairman Stokes. I am sorry.
Mr. McWillie. Sir?
Chairman Stokes. I didn't hear you?
Mr. McWilue. He was there 6 days. I don't recall the exact date
when he was there.
Chairman Stokes. Can you recall any holidays around that time?
Mr. McWillie. No, no, I can't.
Chairman Stokes. Now, would it help refresh your recollection if
we said to you that there are people who saw Ruby in Havana on
September 5, September 6 and September 7? Would that help
refresh your recollection.
Mr. McWilue. That would be the time he was there then, if
people saw him there.
Chairman Stokes. Now, Mr. Chairman, I would ask at this point
that the following exhibits be entered into the record: JFK F-575,
which is a segment of a letter written by Tony Zoppi; F-576, which
is a committee interview with Mr. Zoppi; F-577, which is an FBI
report of an interview with Jack Ruby; F-578, F-579, and F-580,
which are statements of persons who saw Jack Ruby in Havana,
Cuba; and finally F-582, which is an FBI report that further sug-
gests that Ruby went to Cuba.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibits F-575 through
F-580, and F-582 are entered into the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibits F-575 through F-580 and
F-582 follow:]
So to 100 years. ^
The quid; bueV: artists sro
saying Jack v»cnt down there to plan the assassinatinn. lie
c«'uldn*t have olanned a |»as station holdup in those days. /II
of a sudden he*s a CIA ap.cnt, a mafia don, etc, etc.. 2i.ckcn'ng.
Keep in touch and God blcsa. Keen un
1 will say anoUier prayer for Buddy.
the good work and
JFK Exhibit F-575
169
JFK Exhibit F-576
KENNEDY
SELECT COriMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS
‘’OfSSt
Name Tony Zoppi ^ Date 3/31/78 Tim© 2: IS P .f
Address Place Zoppi's office at the •
Riviera Hotel
Las Vegas, Nevada
Interview:
He stated that Dallas was a fairly clean cityA which had no
syndicated or organized crime that he was aware of. Zoppi said
the Dallas Citizens Charter Group (whose head was "Uncle Dob
Thornton", a banker) was a leading civic group in 1950 - 1963
and was pretty good about keeping the city clean. He had heard
the syndicate might have attempted to move into Dallas in the 1950s
from Chicago but was sent back. Upon questioning, he said
it could have been in the late 1940s when attempts were made to
bribe Sheriff Guthrie. He thought Ruby moved to Dallas because
he had a sister operating a club there. Zoppi described Eva as a
"tough gutsy yenta", and the club as never doing very well but
staying above water.
Jack Ruby was aggressive, always trying to improve himself.
Joe Bonds was Ruby's first partner in the Sky Club. Bonds
was subsequently arrested for sodomy, jumped bail and left. The
club went downhill after Bond's arrest. Ruby he recalls, moved to
the Bob Wills ranch house in approximately 1952.
Prior to 1950, the Sopango (possibly Cipango) Club operated as a
club for millionaires only and did have gambling. Gambling at the
Top or the Hill Club stopped in the late 1940s. He said there was
very little gambling in Dallas into the 1950s and that which
existed was locally organized, not national. He doesn't know
Harry Urban.
Zoppi knew McWillie, but not well.
It was Zoppi *s impression that there was little gambling in
Dallas itself. It was more prevalent in the greater Dallas/
Fort Worth area. There was extensive football betting which
operated very discretely. Each bookie had perhaps 10 customers
and was not part of a large organization.
170
Zoppi interview - page 2
Zoppi knew Ben Whitaker ran a gambling operation when Dallas
was wide open in the 1940s. He knew Ray Ryan, (now deceased)
and that he took millions from H, L. Hunt in gambling dealings.
Zoppi doesn’t know and never heard of Harry Hall (Haler or
Sinclair) .
Zoppi knows Babe Baron who is also currently working for the
Riviera in an informal, largely cerimonial role, Baron's first
name is Charles. He is a general in the Army Reserves and a
close friend of General Curtis LeMay. (We subsequently learned
that Baron was visiting LeMay the following week) .
Regarding gambling clubs in Dallas, he stated they were the only
places you could go for mixed drinks. A curfew was in effect
at midnight. There were no real problems with the police, but
there were sometimes problems with the State Alcoholic Control
Board, Zoppi said his average contacts with Ruby were once
or twice a month, usually when J. R. wanted his club acts plugged
in Zoppi' s newspaper column. Sometimes there could be a few in
a week.
Ruby visited Zoppi at 10; 30 on the morning of the assassination
with a picture of an ESP expert he wanted Zoppi to plug. Ruby
was gonsidering using the picture in an ad in the newspaper.
Ruby;^ater said^bs was a "highly emotional person" and Zoppi
believed him to be too calm that morning to have been involved
in a conspiracy. Rxiby told him he was moving into a new apartment
starting Monday that cost $190 a month (up from the $100 that Ruby
had been paying). The new address was 21 Turtle Creek, ^fhen
Zoppi questioned about it. Ruby said "I've scrimped all my life
and now I want to live a little." These were Ruby's last words
to Zoppi. Ruby's financial status was never good. He stated
Ruby always had pieces of clubs, some of which were backed by
Ralph Paul, Zoppi said Ruby was not involved in gambling. He
would be very surprised to hear Jack Ruby ever laid or took a
bet.
Zoppi knows Alice Nichols, Ruby's former girlfriend. He was
surprised to hear she said that Ruby had gambled.
Zoppi hasn't seen McWillie since the 1940s except perhaps once
when he ran into him in the Thunderbird. Zoppi said McWillie Koi..
lived in a very plush home in Dallas. He knew his wife at that
time. His (McWillie' s) wife later married Abe Weinstein.
Bob Larkin was a bouncer in one of the clubs. Zoppi said he
never checked with McWillie on his story (1973) about McWillie
171
Zoppi interview - page 3
inviting Zoppi and Ruby to Cuba. We found this very surprising,
but he insisted he had never checked with McWillie on the story.
His best recollection was that during September or October
of 1958 Ruby offered to write McWillie at the Tropicana to get
them airplane tickets so Zoppi could review the acts at the
Tropicana to help McWillie *s business. The "OK" for the trip
was received in two or three weeks. The date was scheduled
to be approximately December 8 or 9 (or 10 - 12) and the trip
was to last 4-5 days. Zoppi wanted to be back for the holidays -
They would pay their own way down and be reimbursed: this was
the common practice for journalists reviewing acts. In late
November, Jack Entratte r and Al Freeman called inviting Zoppi
to review a big anniversary show at the Sands in Las Vegas.
Zoppi said (as he had written in his article) the show was a
"summit meeting" show featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin,
Sammy Davis, Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Zoppi figured
there wouldn't be anything "like this" in Cuba so he decided
to postpone the trip and told Ruby he would meet him down there
after the new year on approximately January 4. Ruby told Zoppi ^
he would go down, stay down there and meet Zoppi in Cuba. Zoppi
then states he never went down due to Castro's takeover in
January. He vaguely remembers Ruby told him he had a good time
in Cuba. He doesn’t know if Ruby had been there before or not.
He thinks it’s "B.S." that Jack Ruby would have seen Trafficante*
they were simply "...not in the same league." When questioned
about the receipt or payment of the plane tickets, Zoppi said
he doesn't recall receiving a ticket and isn’t sure if Ruby told
him that McWillie sent them.
Concerning AGVA he stated Vincent Lee ("a real martinet") ran
AGVA in the early 1950’s, followed by Dean Jennings (who
lives in the San FraAcisco area now) , followed by J^ Dolan.
He said AGVA was very strong in the 50* s, but deteriorated
post 1963 since the union treasury was basically being robbed-
Ruby’s travels with AGVA led him to go see Tony Pappa of
Associated Booking. Union policy required that clubs use AGVA
members in their acts and put up a deposit to ensure that the
acts would be paid. Tony Pappa currently resides three weeks
in Beverly Hills and one week in Dallas. Ruby also went to see
Joe Glazier, who is Pappa 's boss in furtherance of his complaint
against Abe Weinstein. Ruby tried to see Joey Adams (well
connected with Glazier) and Jackie Bright, head of AGVA in
New York, but they wouldn't let Ruby in to see them. AGVA
boycotted acts or clubs who were not affiliated with the union.
172
Zoppi interview - page 4
The Weinstein Club, next door to Ruby, was one of the best of
the second rate clubs, and was not unionized, but AGVA did
not challenge it. This drove Ruby Crazy, Zoppi figures Weinstein
was probably paying off the union. Ruby's business was hurting
because of the competition with Weinstein, and he was mad, because
he was still stuck with Jada who would not back out of her
contract.
Zoppi spoke with Gordon McClendon about one month ago. Zoppi
knows him well and likes him. G.M, owned KLIF in Dallas and the
Liberty NetworIC {J.R. hung around there some) . Ruby, he says,
loved McClendon because he "had class."
A Dallas police officer named Trautman (phoenetic - possibly
Trautham) gave Zoppi a radio speaker that had been in Ruby's
locker. He reportedly walked the beat which included the
Carousel Club. This concluded the first interview.
The second interview with Zoppi was conducted on 4/5/78 at 1:30
P.M. at his office in the Riviera. This was subsequent to the
depositions taken of Lewis Mcwillie.
We questioned Zoppi concerning the dates of his proposed trip
with Ruby to Cuba, in light of McWillie's certainty that Ruby
visited in August of 1959. We showed Zoppi the letter McWillie
had given us that Zoppi had written to Matty Brescia in 1976
which had "refreshed" McWillie's recollection that Zoppi had had
a role in Ruby's trip to Cuba. Zoppi authenticated his
signature.
Zoppi said Matty Brescia worked for Gordon McClendon and Liberty
Broadcasting. One evening around 1952 Zoppi, Brescia and Candy
Barr were at the Bob Wills Ranch House ^p^Br^sc^ told Jack Ruby
that Tony Zoppi was in the audience, about Zoppi 's
first meeting with Ruby causing Ruby to introduce Zoppi to the
crowd. Brescia knew Ruby through McClendon.
We questioned Zoppi further about the timing of the proposed
trip to Cuba and the reasons it never came off as planned.
We pointed out to Zoppi that Castro's takeover did not prevent
travel to Cuba, at least not right away. We asked Zoppi if he
could give us a better idea why he thought the trip was planned
for December of 1958 and not a different year.
173
Zoppi interview - page 5
Zoppi called the Sands Hotel to check, on their big shows during
the 1958 - 1961 period to see what show he may have reviewed
to cancel his trip to Cuba. He stated it could have been the
December, 1958 show with Rowan and Martin, the December, 1960
show with Marty Allen and Steve Rossi, or the December, 1959
show with Dean Martin, The big show that he thought it was,
with Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis did not take place
until January 20 - February 16 of 1960. After reviewing all
the shows, he admitted he was very unsure what the date of the
scheduled trip was to be. In fact, it was agreed that perhaps
Ruby had gone down in August, 1959 on a vacation for himself,
and the trip Zoppi and Ruby were to take was to be a second
trip to Cuba that in fact neither one ever went on due to Zoppi *s
cancelling out.
Zoppi ’s recollection of the January 4th alternative da te^ which
he thought was prevented by Castro's takeover could possibly have
been prevented by the severing of diplomatic relations between
the U. S. and Cuba on January 1, 1961.
35-379 O - 79 - ir
174
JFK Exhibit F-577
ro 307 3-3-50)
( FEDtRAL BUREAU OF iNysSTIG^ ON
Dot;? _
12/25/63
JACK L, RU3Y was interviewed in an. interview rooa
located on floor 6-M^of^he Dallas County Jail, Dallas, Texas.
His.^attorneys, MELVIM-'IbELLI , San Francisco, California;
JOE^OMAKILL', Jasper, Texas; SAiriBRODY, Los Angeles, California,
and WILLIAIfD^lOULOS , San Francisco',' California , were present.
The interview commenced” at 1:50 PM and continued until 3:30 PM,
when RUBY went to the rest room. It was .resumed again at 3:3^ PM
and continued until 5:00 PM,-
JACK L. RUBY was advised hy SA C, RAY HALL that he did •
not have to make any statement. He was reminded that his attorney
were present, and that any statements he. made in answers to.
questions could be used against him in a court of law. — •
JACK L. -RU3Y then furnished the following information:
.On the. night of V/ednesday, November 20, 1963, he. was at
his club, the Carousel. Club, in Dallas, Texas. He thinks he close
the club at about 2:00 AM on November 21, 1963, One of his dancer
called "LITTLE LYNN”,, drank some champagne before closing, and vxhe
she started home she got sick and passed out at Nichols Brothers
parking ' garage near his club. He thinks this occurred after
2:00 AM on November 21, 1963, but it could have been after
2 :p0 AM on. November 20, 1963. He went over to see about her,
and tried to. get. her to go to a hospital, but she refused to go.
He remained with her, trying to take care of her, until 4:00 Ati
or 5:00 Aii .and then went home, so far as he can now recall.. After
he got home, he went to bed and went to sleep, -r"'
r'*' .vX'/ ■
At about 10:30 AM or 11:00 AM on Novembef* 21 , 1963, he
received a telephone call at home from a girl named^^TR^M^ whos
first name may be CONNIE, or. something simil^. He 'met ^ this girl
at the Caix>usel Club about dight ;m 9 nths • previously , and since meet
her she has called him on the telephone several times. The
TRAhiMELL girl lives in an apartment on either Gaston Avenue or -
Live 'Oak Street in Dallas, VThen she called him on November 21,
1963, she told him that she had to get a job and that she had
an appointment with LAMAR HUNT, He asked her how she 'got an
appointment with HUNT, and she told him that she called HUNT^s
h-ome- and got his number, then just called his office and asked
him for an appointment about a job.
12/21/63
Dallas, Texas
Fil. g ‘“*-1639
C.- RAY HALL and
by b?y.<c\ An.n. s HAHi.'IIlG C. CLEMEi'iTS - ..LAC 1 2/23/&3
175
DL 44-1639
2
TRAllMELL ashed _RU3Y to come after her and give her a.
ride downtown, .so he got dressed, picked her up and drove her
dovmtown. RUBY had an appointment with his attorney but does
not remember, whether it was GRAHAM KOCH or STANLEY KAUFilAN.-
Both. attorneys have offices in the Mercantile Securities
Building,. Dallas, the same building in which LAMAR HUNT has
offices.- -TRAl^ELL* went -up' to -see I*AHAR -HUNT and after RUBY
completed his business with his attorney ■ regarding some. ax
matters, he waited around the cigar stand in the lobby for. a
• while for. TRAM^^, to come '"down, but ..she* did not, so he left and
vxent'to the Carousel Club, Uhen he got- to the club, one of his
employees named LARRY was there. •• — -
LARRY was a young boy whom he had seen at the State
Fair of Texas, and he gave liARRY a job at the Carousel Club,
after the fair closed. He had asked LARRY to build a., crate
so he could ship a dog to a friend of RUBY's, Jil* GRUBER,, .who
lives on Olympic Street in Los Angeles.,. California. .LARRY had
not built the crate, so he got after him for not having do'ne
what he had asked him to do. So far as he remembers, he stayed
around the Carousel Club ‘until about 9; 30 PH, when he and RALPH
PA.UL, who. owns part o‘f the Carousel C!Cub, went- to. -the: Egyptian.
Lounge for dinner. * . •
V?hile they were eating at the Egyptian Lounge,, a man-
named CONNORS, who. is -a salesman for the Dallas Morning News
newspaper,, came over to the table and invited RUBY over to the
Castaway Club located nearby. He declined the invitation because
he did not want to go to this club as the memager had hired an
orchestra away from RUBY that had played for RUBY for sevcx'aX year
After-dinner, RUBY returned to the Carousel Club. During the
evening of November 21, 1963, he did the breaks between shows >
which were two breaks of twenty minutes each, and he used a
roulette wheel to give, away prizes to the audience. Sometime
during the evenings he ordered someone out of the club because ‘
he was creating -a disturbance, but he has no idea who ’this person.
v;as. He believes he closed the Carousel Club at about 2:00 Ai^I on
November 22,’ 1963, and went home. If he went anyt^here to eat
before going home, he do^' not reme.mbar it. He does not how.,
remember whether GEORGS^ENATOR, who shares the apartment with
RUBY, was. at home when he arrived there or not, but he went
directly to bed and went to sleep. .
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DL 4.4-15 3 9
3
On the morning of November 22, 1953, RUBY' got up at
about 9:30 AM and does not now recall .whether GEORGE SENATOR was
in the apartment or not. He drove downtown and stopped at the
Dallas Morning News at about 10:50 AM. He believes he 'stopped.,
•for a moment and talked to two girls employed there, GLADYS CRADD<
and a girl named CONNELLY or CONNELL. He thinks he gave them a
bottle of Larson’s CRD, a food supplement for persons, on a diet*
He then went to the office of TON^r^T^OPPI, but. T0?rY was not there..
RUBY 'looked over a brochure there about B_ILt^T^>LAR a master of
ceremonies • at. the Carousel Club. Another employee, of the news-
paper, a. Mr. PAYNE, may have been in ZOPPI’s office while RUBY
was in there. • y**' ^ '
.f S' ' '
RUBY left that office and went to Jlr. JOHiT7fIEV7MAM’s
office at the newspaper to- talk about RUBY’s ads. RUBY was trying
to make a 12:00 noon deadline. Mr. CONNORS, the same person RUBY
had seen at the Egyptian Lounge the previous evening, came in to
NEWNAM’s office, and they talked for a while. NEWMAM cams in> anc
RUBY co.mpleted his advertisements for his clubs.
At about that time, people began running around, and
RUBY' heard someone say that so.mebody had been shot. -First, he
heard that Governor CONNALLY had been shot, then a Secret >
Service 'Agent, and then someone said that “our bel^oved* President *
has been shot”. RUBY then called his sister,- EVA/^RANT, and told
her about the shooting and told her he would be at her house as
soon as he could. He left the Dallas Morning News but does not k
•the time when h^left. He drove to the Carousel Club and told hi
employee j i^DY^'^i-iSTRONG, to get in touch with everybody and tell
then -he was closing his clubs. He then called a friend, ALICE
NICHOLS, and sha toldhicithat Neinan-Marcus had closed their
store. • He called Atr^RUBER in Los Angeles from the Carousel Club
and told GRUBER he would send a dog to him soon* RUBY said he
talked to GRUBER about the death of President KENNEDY but began
crying and finally just told GRUBER he had to break it off and
hung up the telephone. ' '
Somebody brought some merchandise to the club, but he
does not remember who it was, and RUBY just told the man to take
the merchandise back. as he did not want apy. He called his sister
several.. times during the afternoon and was so upset that he was
belligerent toward his employees, ANDY and L'ARRY, v;ho were at
the Carousel Club, He remembers getting a telephon^call from
KATHY-T^AY; he called his business associate , RALP'rf^AUL , and told
PAUL that he was going to close his clubs; he called BRECtt^trALL
in Galveston, and also JOE PETERSON; and he called his sister
EILEEN in Chicago, locating her at his sister MARIA-P s house*
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DL 4if-1639
Sometime late that afternoon, he* left the Carousel
Club and went to the Ritz Delicatessen and bought jSL__lpt__of Jf ood
and then went to the home of his sister in Dallas.,- EVA GPJ^T. He
and his^ sister talked. and while there, his employee, ANBY-, called
and told him that DO-r^AFRAN, of the Dallas Times Herald., had
called and wanted to get in touch with him, RUBY then called
SAFR.AN, who. told RUBY that the Cabana and the Century Room were
going to close- and *he did not know what ABE and BARNEY V7EH(STEIiT
ware^goxng to do. ^ RUBY said, he told SAFPAN that he had already
closed, without aiking what the other club owners were doing.
SAFRAN then asked RUBY about whether he would be open ^ the ne^
night, and RUBY- said he did .not know but would call him back.
In a few minutes RUBY called SAFRAN back and told- 'him- he’ was
going, to be- closed Saturday and Sunday nights, in addition to •
Friday night, . - ’
• - At no time did RUBY go to Parkland Hospital on ' .
November 22, 1963. .At about 7:00 PN or 8:00 PM, he left his
sister’s home and drove to his apartment to get dressed to. go
to Congregation Shearith Israel Synagogue, arriving there at
about 10:00 PM or 10:30 PM. Before he left his apartment, he
called Dr. COLEM.Ail JACOBSON to determine when the services began
at his Synagogue. Following services, refreshments were served,
but he did not feel like visiting v;ith anyone. He stayed there
for a short-time, then drove toward downtown. He passed the Club
BaliHaij noticing that it was open, and then drove by the* Gay Life
Club and saw. that it was closed. He then drove on to Phil’s
Delicatessen and went in and talked to the owner, PHIL MILLER.
He had read :in the newspaper, or heard over the radio*, trhat the
police officers- in the . Homicide Bureau would be working overtime
that night, so he ordered ten sandwiches and decided he would
. take them something to eat. After he ordered the sandwiches, he
called the Police Department Homicide Bureau and talked to
Detective -SIMS, telling *him*he *was -getting *some *sendwic’)ies and
would-bring-them*down-for-them: * SIMS - told ’him -they v?ere-about
through 'and ‘were ’winding 'up things "there 'and *did'not*v7a.nt any-
thing to eat-, • - After ' SIMS -told him 'thatj.* he -decided he -^would
take^the sandwiches -to the employees at KLIF Radio -Station.
•He -explained 'that he -has -known -GORDO LEM DON, owner ;
of the radio -station; -for* a number'of -years, -and he also/knows
\ RUSS KNIGHT, a disk' jockey at the station. The employees at the
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DL 4»r~lB39
5
radio station have been good about giving him free plugs when
he was trying to get started with his clubs, and he just w^ulted
to do something for them because he knew they would be working
late. He called GORDON MC LEMDON's home, from Phil*s Delicatessen
in order to get a number at the radio station so he could talk to
the. men on duty there. The daughter gave him a number^ and he
told her he was going to take some sandwiches to the radio •
station, but the daughter told him her mother had aJLready sent
some food up there, RUBY called the number he had gotten, but
it iJas a wrong nuraber-
. He picked up his . sandwiches and discovered they hadj inade
only, eight i when he ordered ten. He drank a soft drink, then' left
with his sandwiches and drove downtown, driving up Commerce Street
and parking across from the City Hall, He decided to go to the
Police Department to try to locate some newsmen from KUCF in
order to obtain the unlisted phone number for the radio station*
He went to the third floor of the Police Department, where the
newsman were gathered. As he got off the elevator, a policeman,
who was not known to RUBY, asked him where he was going, -or whom •
he wanted to see. RUBY told him he was looking for JOE .DELONG, -
of KLIF, and the officer let him go on inside,. He looked around
for a labile , without seeing anyone from KLIF, and asked some
unknown police officer to have JOE DELONG paged over the loud-
speaker, DELONG did not answer the page , * but while he was waitin'
he saw Captain FRITZ, of the Police Department, coma out of ‘ his
office with a person, OSWALD, RUBY heard a reporter tell FRITZ
that this was not a good place," so FRITZ went back inside his
office with OSWALD, In a minute, RUBY heard some newsmen say
something about the basement, so he went down there to an
assembly room where some newsmen were.
When he • saw OSWALD here , this was the first time that
he had ever seen him. He had never heard the name of LEE HARVEY*
0S‘v7ALD. before OSWALD’S arrest’ on November- 22, 1963, by the Dallas
Police Department, Any rumors that OSWALD was ever at any of-
RUBY*s clubs are wrong because RUBY had never seen LEE HARVEY-
OSWALD at any place before he saw him with Captain FRITZ at the*
Dallas Police Department the night of November 22, 1963. Any
rumors that OSWALD was at the Carousel Club are absolutely untrue
RUBY has since heard reports that his master of ceremonies at the
Carousel Club, BILL DEHARj has reported that OSWALD was at' the
Carousel Club one night before President KENNEDY was assassinated
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DL 4U-1539
6 . , . .
RUBY said that this is absolutely false, because - OSWALD was never*
there. RUBY has heard that ED SULLIVA^J got in touch /with BILL
DEMAR and wanted DEMAR on SULLIVAN's television . program, but
SULLIVAN did not believe DEllAR’s story and would not use hin.
RUBY ^further advised that. newspaper reports that RUBY, and OSWALD
were seen together- in Waco , Texas, are complete falsehoods because
he was never with OSWALD anjn^here. Reports that OSWALD was going
to ruby's apartment after President KENNEDY'S death are abso-
lutely false, because 0SV7ALD did not know RUBY, 'RUBY has never
had 'any previous, connection with 0SV7ALD, and 0SV7ALD could, not
have .been going to RUBY's apartment, RUBY said that his’ employee.
AI'JDY ..ARMSTRONG, knows more about RUBY's club and RUBY’s morals
than anyone, else, and Al'IDY can tell anyone that OSWALD. v;a& never
..in the Carousel Club. • • *
When RUBY got to the assembly iroom, he went to the
back of the room and stood on top of a table, so he could see
and be out of the way. In a few minutes j I^ENRY WADE, the District
Attorney, and Captain FRITZ came into the assembly room- with
'OSVJALD for an interview with the press. 0SV7ALD mumbled or talked
a little, but the newsmen could not hear him. RUBY did not hs 2 ir
OSvLALD either. After a short time. Captain FRITZ took OSWALD
away. HENRY WADS was then ' interviewed by the newsman,
RUBY said that he had his..revolver . in his right* front
trouser.- pocket all during this evening, .November. 22. and 23,
1963, except when he went to church services. He left -the
revolver in his car while he was in church but put it back in
his right trouser: pocket when he got back to his car. He said-
he carried'.his gun because he had a lot .of ..money* on *his person
and always caih^ied his gun when he carried money.
After the interview with V7ADE, RUBY left the assembly
room and was out in the corridor. A newsman came by whom RUBY
did not know, and RUBY asked him if he had seen JOE DELONG, of
KLIF. This man said he had not seen DELONG^ and RUBY mentioned *
that he- had some sandwiches for KLIF. This man said he was from.
KBOX radio and asked RUBY what was the matter with them . * RUBY
said he told the man that next time maybe, but this time he had
the sandwiches for KLIF. This man. from. KBOX then gave RUBY the
unlisted phone number for KLIF. RUBY went around behind the
counter in the basement offices of the Police Departmant and
telephoned KLIF, talking to an employee named KEN. He told KEN
he had some sandx^iches but could not get in the entrance, door
to the radio station. At about that time, HENRY WADE walked
by, and RUBY was still talking to KEN so he asked KEN if he
vrantcd- to talk to HEN.RY V7ADE, KEt; said he. did, so RUBY'called
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DL 44--1639
7 .
to HENRY WADE and told V7ADE ha was wanted on the telephone.
V7ADE talked on the phone to KEM, then handed the phone back to
RUBY. RUBY t^ked to KEN again, and KEN told him. . it .v/as great
of RUBY to help him get the interview with V7ADE.
RUBY said he then left the Police Department building,
went to his car and drove over to Radio Station KLIF* He got
the .sandwiches out of his car to take them upstairs, but the
front door was locked. In about ten or fifteen minutes, RUSS
KNISHI came by and let him inside. They all went upstairs ,
and the. employees on duty ate the sandwiches. RUBY left Radio
Station KLIE at about . 3 :00. Ali -on liovember 23, 1983, and drove to
the. Dallas Timas Herald newspaper building.* He went inside and
talked. to an employee named PAT GADOSH and gave PAT a twist
•board, an exerciser, GADOSK is the person at the newspaper who
takes ruby’s ads for his clubs.
. . He. talked with GADOSH-jabo^ the advertisement in. the
Dallas Morning -News, by BERNARD' WE I^MAM, that was critical, of
President KENNEDY. GADOSH told RU3Y not to worry abou£ the ad,
because- the Dallas .Morning News was suffering enough for carrying
such an ad. *• RUBY got his ad taken care of and drove toward home.
\ .driving home', RUBY thought of the similajcity
between. tl)e.. BER^IAPJ) .VJEISSMAM advertisement, .and- a. sign he. had
seen which read, "Impeach EARL WARRENM, He drove home, and
awakened GEORGE SENATOR and asked SENATOR to go with him. He
called the Carousel Club and awakened his employee, LARKY, and
asked. LARRY, if. he. knew how to operate a Polaroid camera. LARRY
said he could operate. tha camera, so he told .LARRY he would be
. down . to pick up LARRY ‘ and the • camera. . RUBY, and SENATOR - then
drove to the Carousel- Club sometime about 4:00 or 5:00 AM on
November 23, 1963, and picked up LARRY and*the camera.* They .
drove to Central Expressway and Ross Avenue, whers**they foxind
a sign, about 2 feet by 4 feet, on top of a Potter Steel Conipany
sign, which read *7» impeach EARL -WARREN , and at the bottom- ' of *^his
sigrr-was*”Box 1757 ^ Beltham, Mass.” .
• They took some photographs of this sign, and RtJBY then
remembered that the .BERNARD WEISSMAN ad had the address "Box 1732
Dallas, Texas", so they drove to the Main Post Office in Dallas
and looked at Post Office Box 1732. RUBY asked a man on duty at
the post office for the name of the man who had Post Office Box
1792, but- the man told* him he could not give RUBY the nama of
the box holder. They left and went to the Southland Hotel
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DL 44-1639
8
Coffee Shop, where RUBY talked for a few ninutes with the
owner, a man believed to be named WEBB, RUBY said as a
patriotic American he was so upset and intense over the sign, .
and-^ha- advertisement critical of President KENNED"^
could not eat anything but drank some orange juice at the'
coffee shop'; They left the coffee shop and dropped off LARRY
at the Carousel Club at about 6:00 AM, As he got out of the
car, lARRY. told RUBY that he supposed RUBY was not going to
bed/ and RUBY told LARRY that he was not going to bed, RUBY
and SENATOR drove on to their apartment and went to bed.'
At about 8:30 AM on November 23, 1S53, LARRY phoned
RUBY and asked him what kind of dog food he wanted, RUBY said
that before he realized that he had told LARRY he was not going
to bed, he talked real ugly to LARRY. He found out later that
LARRY left 'the keys to the Carousel Club next door and left
town without telling RUBY he was leaving or where he was going.
RUBY got up at about 11:00 or 11:30 AM and got dressed and
drove downtown. Ke decided to stop and look at all the wreaths
that had been placed on the side of the street near where
President KENNEDY had been shot. He looked at. -the wreaths, then
v;ent over to- talk to Police Officer CHANEY, who v;as on. duty
there, and talked with CKANEY for a few minutes, but choked up
and left because he did not want CHANEY to see him crying* He
went on up the street and met WES WISE, of KRLD television station
and talked .to V/ISE for a few minutes. He drove on away and as he
was . leaving he noticed that Captain FRITZ and Chief of Police
CURRY were walking around the scene of the assassination. He
backed up and told WISE, "There goes FRITZ and CURRY", He ’then
drove* on home. .,A
W. • ’
Later on.- in the afternoon he drove ba'ck downtown and
went .to :Sol*.s Turf Bar- and talked with a man named BELLOCHIO,
or something like that,., who was in the place, and also talked
to his accountant ; -AB&^LEINMAN , who was in the place. He
showed them photos that‘he’'had taken of the sign "Impeach EARL
VJARREN” , and they 'talked about that, BELLOCHIO was talking
about the bad -publicity that. Dallas would get because President
KENNEDY had 'been killed in Dallas and said he would probably
have to - leave town. RUBY reminded hint that he had made his
-money in Dallas and should not leave now. BELLOCHIO wanted one
•of the photos that RUBY had taken, but RUBY would not -give him
a photo. -VJhile in- this bar RUBY called his attorney, STANLEY
■KAUFHAN, and he -told STANLEY about the photos. RUBY was in
Sol's Turf Bar about forty-five minutes, then left sometime
between 3:00 and 4:00 PH on the afternoon of November 23, 1963,
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DL 44-1639
9
- He does not rer.'.enbsr exactly v:here he v/ent .
when he left but nay have gone by the Lacy Building to see his
tailor, but'he then went back to *ths . Carousel Club and -then on.
home. . His employee ANDY at the Carousel Club, called him about
6:00 PM and wanted to leave, but RUBY told AJJDY to stay at the
club to answer any. incoming telephone calls. He .stayed 'home
until about 11:00 PM, when he went to the Pago Club. He sat
down at a back table. and ordered a Coke, BOB NORTON; the manager^
came o-ver and told RUBY that he was going to close .the club but
had been- told to keep it open, RUBY told NORTON, that was -.all
right; he could do whatever he wanted to da,.-but he-had. closed
his clubs,* * RUBY lef.f .thera -after he f inished.his Coke* and , drove
to his Carousel Club, He stayed around there for a little .while,”
then drove home because, he was not interested, in any gaiety. He
did not go to' the Cabana* Motel and visit a club, there.
RUBY said that on the rooming of November *24 1983,
he -got a call from one of his dancers called LITTLE LYNN,**who
has been a pain to him because of her actions, and she 'said she
needed some- money for her landlord. On Friday night, November 22,
1963, he had to give her* $5.00 so .she could get home. . He. did not
want her to* come by his apartment to get the money because her
husband would come with her and RUBY did not like her husband. .
He told LYNN he would send her some, money by Western Union to
Fort liorth, Texas. He had a lot of money with him tha*t he had
for a deposit to pay his excise tax, so he got his revolver and. pu
it in his right front . trouser pocket. .He said he never carried th
gun in his coat pocket because it would get his. coat out of shape.
— .. . .^ . jjg said he had no permit to carry a gun and had no card
or badge as any kind of ‘ j -
a number* of officers of the Dallas Police Department’ knew he had e
gUHi* *He -recalled that a couple of times the police officers had
taken, him :out of jail and given his gun back to hxm.- He did not
recall’the-na.mes‘of these officers. He said that being -around
clubs - and* carrying money--it w-as like a jungle with all the
sti.ckaps--he carried:his' revolver when he had money on his person.
, He left his apartment, got in his car and steurted to
town to send the money to LITTLE LYNN. . As he drove out of his
driveway, he stopped and talked to a neighbor, name unknown but
who is the father-in-law of Police Officer BUDDY MUEHSTER, RUBY
had. his dog in the car with him. He drove toward town on the
Thornton Expressway and turned off onto Industrial Street, then
up Industrial to Main Street so he could see the wreaths at the
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DL 44-1639
10 . •
spot where President KENNEDY was assess inated^ Jts he passed
the. County Building -he noticed a lot of people around so he
assumed that OSWALD had already been moved to the County. Jeiil..
He drove on up Main Street and as- he passed the City .Hall he
noticed -a number of people around there. Just befora lie-reached
the next corner, he made an illegal left turn into a parking lot
across the. street from. the VZestern Union Office and parked his
car there. He left his dog in his car. He then walked across
thd 'street and sent- a money order for $25.00 -to -LITTI-E LYNN at
Tort Worth, . - •
After sending- the telegram, -he- left -the Western Union
office and walked west on the scune side of -the -street,- toward
the'.City Hall, located on -the next corner Before he reached
the Police Department building, he noticed a police officer
standing at the entr^ce to the ramp going into the basement
'from Main Street, -but- he did not know the police officer. Just
before he, reached that, point, a police car came out of the
basement,' and he recognized the driver of the police car as
.Lieut, : PIERCE. .. He explained he has known Lieut, PIERCE for
twelve, or fourteen years. PIERCE did not look toward-him or
speak to him and RUBY did not speak to Lieut. PIERCE, RU3Y^
could. not recall . seeing anyone else' in the. police car with.*
Lieut, PIERCE in either the front *or back seat of the police car.
Ajs. the. police car driven by Lieut, PIERCE came -.out of
the basement ramp, the officer on duty at the entrance stepped
•back. and waDJced .toward the curb next to the street, with his
back toward RUBY. . As the police car got even with this- officer^
the officer stooped down and looked inside the. car. At ‘about
this time, RUBY, had- reached the. entrance to the Main Street
ramp,- 2 Lnd. he took in the movement of the police car and the
officer on duty at the ramjp^ with a quick glance*. Without
breaking his stride or hesitating, RUBY turned to his 'left auid
walked down the ramp into the basement. As he entered the
•ramp, he does not 'recall, seeding any person standing 'around the
entrance,, and he does not know a former police officer named
DAJIIELS. .
RUBY said he *is positive he did not have either of
his hands in any of his pockets — either coat or trouser pockets
when he entered and walked down the ramp. He did not look behinc
him to. see which way the police car went when it entered the
street, and he did not look behind him to see whether anyone
observed him entering the basement, RUBY said he had no kind
ll ■ ^
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DL 44-1639
II
of press card or any other kind of identification on the outside
of his coat, and he exhibited no identification to anyone to
gain entrance to the basement. •
Just as he got to the bottom of the ramp, RUBY said,
”A person who pops -out with two men; that is all I can remember;
naturally- I know who he is; to me ; he had this smirky, smug,
vindictive- atti-tude; -I- can't explain what impression he gave me,
but that is all I can , well, I just lost my senses; the next
I knew I -was on the ground and -five or six people were on top of
me'*. RUBY said that as he was going down the ramp he spoke to no
one and no one -spoke to him, - He did not recognize anyone in “the
crowd there, and he did- not stop and stand behind anyone.
RUBY was asked whj'- he -killed OSWALD, and he said, **X
was in mourning Friday and Saturday. To me, when he shot before
me like -he -did, something' in my insides tore out, and -I just went:
blank. .To me, -he represented — I'll go back a little bit. I
listened to a eulogy Saturday morning, I am sure, and- X Heard
Rabbi SILVERMAN speak about our President. He said, 'Here- is a
man that -fought in all battles, but he didn’t have a chance to
fight here, he was shot from the rear'. I have been around people
that ' are so smug and hard. Then about OSWALD- being associated
. with -Communism, .and how he blemished.'this beau-tiful city; ^lnd Mrs.
• KENNEDY having to coma back to the trial. I told no one I was
going to kill him. No Que knew I was going to shoot him. I didn''
discuss anything with anyone about .shooting. him^ .No police
officer assisted me in any way, or did, or said anything to
suggest -.my shooting OSWALD. I remembered KULLINAX, a police
.officer . who was killed, -and MULLINAX was a friend of mine. .1 did
not know J.- D; TIPPIT. I knew a TIPPIT on the police department,
but he was in • the Special Service Bureau, and he vras not the TIPPI
that was killed. I did not know the TipPIT that v;as killed."
RUBY said he has never had any serious illnesses or
hospitalizations and does not have -a steel plate in his head.
He • volunteered his mother had previously been committed to an
insane, asylum. He professed to kno'w of no other history of mental
illness in his family.
'RUBY stated ' he xyas born in Chicago in 1911. He spent
four ’or five years in various foster homes in • Chicago , -inentioning
that his father was an alcoholic. He said the father's alcoholic
habits contributed to- his mother's mental condition ,* along with
her problems in "the change of life". He said he remained in
Chicago until 1933.
?Xi
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12
. ui . • He- said .that _ in .1933 he , one _AL-T‘pu?IN , I-[AURY . X last name
not recalled ). and ..a third person, VJhose name .he:-. could, not imme-
diately recall, went to Los. Angeles, California, -.where they sold
^Collier’s Tip. Sheet”, which he described as a handicapper**s
tip sheet- for horse races. He said their arrival in the Los
Angeles-. area coincided, as he recalled, i-jith the opening of the
Santa Anita Race Trach, -Ke -related they remained in the Los^
Angelas, area -for a few -months only and. during the same year,*
1933, want to the San Francisco area, where he at first engaged,
in similar activities at the Bay .Meadows Race Track. -Subsequently,
he sold- subscriptions to Kearst newspapers, the San Fraincisco ’
Examiner- and San Francisco Call Bulletin, covering San Francisco
and small towns in the general area,
■ * ‘ , . . . . y; ^
He said he remained in San Francisco until 1337 and **
returned to Chicago and was unemployed for a considerable -period,.
In 1311, he related, he, his brother EARirS^UBY, HAJilTif^PSTEDr,
MARTY^HARGOL (Phonetic) and MARTYN^GIHPLE ”wsnt on the.^road”
selling punch boards and small cedar^chests in numerous Eastern
and L'e-w England states. He specifically mentioned the states of
Co^^^cticut and Pennsylvania. He said he had no fixed
address during this period, that the group lived in various hoteisw
RUBY related that in late 1941 he returned to Chicago
and .continued his business- of selling punch boards, primarily
■through mail orders;* He mentioned an advertisement- was run in
Billboard magazine in this regard. He mentioned <that during -this
period he became very closely associated with ARTYP^AYNE, a ^
musician,. ^ *' - ’ '
RUBY stated he remained in Chicago until 1942. He said
his brother SAMUEL was in military service, stationed a-t* Jefferson.
Barracks in the St, Louis area. He said he went to St. Louis and
spent a week or two there, to be near his brother. His brother
E.ARL, he related, -was at the time* in the U. S. Kavy, -stationed '
at Dutch Harbor, He said he sold punch ' boards*. t-rhiie-ih'.the* * "
St; Louis area; He said he returned to Chicago in 1942 and*”hung
^around home,”* mentioning, specifically the area of Division and
Damon Streets; He -said he had.had. difficulties \^ith his previous
partners -in the punch board business. —
in -’the period 1942"1943', he operated out of Globe Auto
Glass Company, owned by one MORRIENkELLMAH, He mentioned that his
brother HYMAM had, during this period, been released from military
service as being ”too old”. He said that he personally entered
186
DL 44-1639
13 -
the military service in 1343 and remained until 1546*
RUBY said that in 1946, on being discharged froin
military duty, he -returned to Chicago and "prospered" in his
mail order business involving punch boards and miscellaneous
items. He said. his sister EVA had for sofcie time been wanting
to operate a -night club in Dallas and had moved to Dallas from
CaliLfornia, He said he in the meantime. had .had some friction
with his brothers and had sold;his interest in their mutual J
business of' selling punch' boards and other items to. the brothers*
. V- •
He said he sent money to his sister EVA for a -lease on
a building in which to open a club. He said he at that time was
:living at 'the Congress Hotel, Chicago, having saved some money.
.He said* for a -brief period he was associated with one PINKIE_
>^ARyDQQ, who lived in Detroit, in. the. promotion, of.* V cookware*^*
This”was.- not. a. successful venture, * * -
He said that in 1947 he moved to Dallas to be associated
with EV.A in the night club business. He returned to Chicago, how-
ever, in the same year in a few months in an effort to enter into
various ’tierchandising deals". • Being unsuccessful^-.he re turned to-
Dallas in 1347 and has lived in Dallas continuously since'. .
RUBY said he went broke in the night club business in
1952 and had a "mental breakdown"; He continued along this line
by saying he was "mentally depressed" and that he "hibernated in
the Cotton Bow-l Hotel" for three or four months, declining- to see
his friends. He said he went back to Chicago briefly and his
brother EARL tried to help him put financially* He returned to
Dallas, however, in 1952.
RUBY said his first ventures in Dallas* were -thja Bob Er-
wins Ranch House and Silver Spur, He said that .WILLIE^PSTEIH
and HARXY SIMPLE were associated with him in the Silver ^piir
and it v;as at the Silver Spur that he went broke. He' said -after
his "comeback" he- tried operating the Silver Spur again* -In 1952-
1953 he operated the Ervay Theater, a motion picture house,
briefly. In 1953 he became associated in the - Vegas:. Club and
"Hernando's Hideaway".
In 1956 he sold his interest in the Silver Spur* He
related that in 195 9-1960 he persuaded his brother EARL to come
to Dallas and to assist in establishing the Sovereign Club.
EARL did not remain in Dallas, however. He said the Sovereign
187
DL 41J--1639
is;
Club, established as a private club, became the Carousel > which. -
continues to operate,
RUBY said he has not been associated with, or ..operated
any night-clubs except in Dallas, Texas.
RUBY stated that he visited a . friend of his. brother* in.
VJindsor, Ontario Canada, in 192 9-1930 for two or three months* -
In i 533, when en route to California on a brief trip, he went
across into Mexico at Juarez. He said this was purely . a. **tourist**
trip of short duration. He said he has never been in Mexico “
otherwise and has never been outside the Continental United States
except as indicated above and below. He said he has never been, in
Honolulu, Hawaii,
• RUBY ra^^ed that in August 1959 he went to Havana,
Cuba, to see_L, _C.^?^CJiILLIE, who v;as ’'some sort of - a. good wiil
nTan" for the Tropicana, a gambling establishment. He said MC UILb
sent him a' plane ticket and he lived at -the:Fosca Apartments viith
KC,lJILLI£-Xor a period of eight to ten days. He said he- spent alX
.of his time in Havana except to go "to a small area on one* occasion
with, "one* of - the • FOX brothers”, v/ho owned the Tropicana, - ’He said
his'-. trip to Cuba was completely non-political and that he-has had
no correspondence with persons in Cuba; He said MC WILLIE is now
at the Thunderbird Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada .
‘ RUBY stated he has not been, a jnember of any political
associations, clubs or organizations,-. .He said his brother HYMAM
was at one time interested in politics in Chicago in a small- way*
He said he may have belonged to B'nai B’rith and the *” Jewish
Welfare Fund”. He said he has never been a member of the
Communist Party or any ’’front” organizations, that he has had no
membership in, or affiliation with, or interest in ’’Fair Play for
Cuba” or any other Cuban organization of any type,
RUBY volunteered that some years ago, ”at a’ time wh6n
CASTRO was popular in the United States”, he read of an individual
in the vicinity of Houston, Texas, having been engaged in “gun
running to CASTRO"-. He said he attempted by -telephone to get in
touch with -this individual as he had in mind ."making- a- buck” by
possibly acquiring some Jeeps or other similar equipment -which
he might sell to persons interested in their importation to- Cuba*
He said nothing came of this. He said he had never a'ttcnded any*"
meetings concerned wLth "gun running", smuggling of per.sons in
or oat of Cuba or- otherwise • in* relation to Cuban affairs.
RUBY said he was associated in about l937 in Chicago
wi-th the Scrap Iron and Junk Dealers Union but has otherwise had
188
Dj^ 44.-16 39
15 • - • •
no other direct association v;ith any union except American Guild,
of Variety Artists, the latter in connection with his night club
businesses,
RUBY stated that during the summer of 1983 he tooJc a
trip\to Houston, ^Texas', en route to Edna, Texas, where he visited
^ND^BARJR, a for^iier Dallas strip tease figure -who had just. been.
relea^dU from _the Texas State Penitentiary. He , said he gave
CANDY a\dog.*as a. present. He said he went on to 2Jew Orleans oa
this sane trip, his purpose being to attempt to engage the ser-
vices of “JADA", a stripper who had been performing in New
Orleans, ' •
He said that in the summer of 1963 he flew via Ameidcan
Air Lines to New York City, where • he remained for two or*three
days at- the -new -Hilton Hotel. He said his purpose was to see
JOE.M^i^ER, a booking agent, and to see officials of American
Guiid’of* Variety Artists in order to register complaints relative
to competitors in Dallas. He said he trave^ec^ alone. On this
trip,. he recalls having run into "DANTE",, a m^J^ician, in an ^ s ^
automat and having"visited or contacted BARJI£.y 5^SS, former^
well-known prize fighter whom he had known .in Chicago, He said
on the ..return to Dallas he went via Chicago and that members ojf '*
his family joined him' brief ly at 0* Hare Field, the Chicago
airport. "RUBY said. he could recall no other travel outside- of
Dallas during 1983. ^ -
He mentioned having been in New York, Joplin, Missouri j
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and“Chicago in 1956 when he was attempting to
promote -a -young Negro tap dancer and drummer named .NELSON, also
known as "LITTLE 'DADDY". He said this trip lasted several* weeks*.
He related' that -he was in Hot*Springs, Arkansas, in
1956, as he recalls, having flo^^n there to attend the races. He
said he believed he was'in Little Rock during the -same trip
briefly.. He said he was in Las. Vegas, Nevada, in 1937 and does nc
recall having been there since that time.
RUBY stated that no police • of ficers accompanied Mm on
the trip to Hot Springs, mentioned above, and that he had never
been outside the City of Dallas with any Dallas law enforcement
officers. He said he had never employed any Dallas policeman
in any of his clubs, although he had employed "Special Officers”.
For the services of the latter, he paid the City of Dallas, and
the City in turn paid the "Special Officers" in question. He sale
189
DL 44-1639
16
he had never given money or other things of value, to officers
of the Dallas Police Department except bottles of whiskey at
Christmastime to some. He said he had also had a practice of
admitting • off icers to his clubs without cover charge and having
given ** special prices" on drinks; for example, he wouXd give
officers beer for 40 cents a bottle, where his usual price was
more. He. said.' he had never asked any special favors from any
police personnel.
35-379 0 - 79-13
ro-jo» c"-^. !-*-»*). FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION . '
1 '/ 60533? ' b-t. 11/2^/63
■Wfj'W-y':- NOV30i96:^
SHEHWIN JACK BRAUN, Architect, 6238 North Boyne,
buslnesB address 140 East Ontario. Chicago, Illinois, ^advised
on the Labor Day veekend of 1959, 'be, JACK IIARCUS and JAY.
B1SB07 rlslted Havana, Cuba lor three or lour days vhlle on-
B Florida vacation prior to returning to school In Chicago i
Illinois*
On the llrat or second night In Havana , the three
men had visited the Troplcana night club In Havana, Cuba .and
vere standing by the roulette vheel or crap table vhen a
man valked up and introduced hlmsell. BRAUN adlsed be
thought the man gave bis name as JACERJBY but sas not sure*
BRAUN stated he did not know the nan \rbd said be had originally
been Iron Chicago, Illinois, but now ovned some sort of night
club or gambling establishment in Texas, possibly Dallas, The
nan Invited the three nen to visit bis night club vbenever they
got to Texas*
BRAUN stated he believed RUBY was alone but appeared ^ ^
to know bis vay around and uas familiar with the employees of the
Troplcana* BRAUN stated RUBY did not give him a business card
nor did he know how long RUBY stayed In Cuba nor vhere be stayed.
BRAUN described the man known as JACK RUBY as a
white male American, large or heavy build, with round or oval
face, had a "Jewish appearance", and did not have a Texas or
southern, accent* BRAUN stated no radical or political type states
ments were made, nor were any comments made other than the
above casual remarks made by RUBY.
on .11/25/63 o» Chicago, IlllnQla
by Spociol Agont .
DANIEL P* BLAKE/tJd
Filo ;
CG 44-643’
PL 44-1639
11/26/63
. Dot* dictotod _
Thu 4ac*B**t CMtalM n*tth*r »*c/-- no. ranela*taa* of lti« FBI. It !• Ih- "•>*rtr tli* FBI «itd U lot
yo«r o«*ncr; It **4 II* eoJit*>tl* ar*CQ*° • b« tfUtrlh*l»d evtald* your aqancj.
JFK Exhibit F-578
TD-JM C"**.
191
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
JAY (HMD BISHCJT, Attoopnay, B060 Korth Rldg«, •
business address 9152 Hortb Clerk, Chicago, Illinois, advised
be Tisiied Havana, Cuba for three or four days about the »
first of September , as it was the Labor Day, weekend in l®l^f
BISH07 stated be was with two other companions, a JACK HAEJOS -
and SHSEWIM BRAUH, both of Chicago, Illinois.
BISHOV stated that the second or third night Itt .
Havana, Cuba, be, BBAHH and UARCfjb were standing near a crap .
table or roulette wheel at the Tropicana night club when a
man approached and Introduced himself by a name which BXSBOV
believed was JACK BDBT. RUBY asked where the three men
were from and when BISHOV stated he was from the Vest Side bt
Chicago, Illinois, RUBY stated that he was also from that
sectin of Chicago, Illinois, but h|id moved to Dallas, Texas
some years before. BISHOV stated SXSSf did not specify any*
particular street names or individuals with whom be bad been
acquainted in Chicago, IllinoiSk
BISHOV stated JACK RUBY extended an invitation
to the three men to visit him at one of his night clubs In
Dallas, Texas. BISHOV stated>he was under the impression RUBY
owned more than one night club' in Dallas, Texas and indicated
that' these clubs were somewhatiplusb. ' •
BISHOV stated RUBY appeared to know his way around
the Tropicana night club, Havana, Cuba and may have been
familiar with some of the employees. BISHOV stated the
conversation .lasted only about ten aiinutes and nothing other than
the above casual comments were made. BISHOV stated no radical
political type statements were made nor was there any kdication
RUBY belonged to any particular organizations. BISHOV stated
he did not know bow long RUBY bad been in Havana, Cuba, where
be was staying nor when be was supposed to return to the United
States.
BISHOV stated be was not sure of the same nor of the
picture appearing in the daily newspaper, that it was identical
to the JACK RUBY be met in Cuba but described this individual as
a white male American, of average build, 5*7” - 61, 165 •- 200 pounds
dark hair, with a "Jewish appearance", ' and was in bis mid or late
forties. BISHOV stated RUBY was an extrovert and loud talker but
appeared to be friendly. - •
11/25/63 ^. Chicago, Illinois
DANIEL P. BLAKE/tJd
DL 4^1639
FM. I CG 44^645
. Dots rflctotarf .
11/26/63
by Spaclol Agwit
ThI. cMlabi. n.lth*r'aenoiB«i>4allan. nor cenela.lon. ol tK. TBI. I* of Ih* FBI «•# !■ to
To.r a«.ner;Jt ood ot to b. dlatrlbMtod euUtdo o,o»«y. {'TOor
JFK Exhibit F-579
192
JFK Exhibit F-580
bureau OP myES^Ti^Ai, ■ ‘^Pi 'cK 5
00504 ’
p.i. .,.^V8/g3..
/J ACK (NI3I) MARCP^C^ ge 27, advised ho an attorney,
business address, Kqrth LaSalle Street, Suite 1508, Chicago,
Illinois, phone number CL 6-393G, and reside^ at 812 Brown,
Evanston, Illinois. ^
Mr. MARCUS stated h,e visited Havana, Cuba, Xor iour
days during the Labor Day week end, 1959, with two companions,
JAY BISHOT and SBERI7IN BRAUN, During this vacation trip, the
three were approached by a man in the Tropipana Night Club
Havana, Cuba, who gave his name as JAQK RUBY. R^Y stated
he heard the three men vdre from the Nnited States and Indicated'
he was familiar with Chicago, Illinois, had some acquaintances
in Chicago and may possibly have been' originally from Chicago.
RUBY stated he owned a night club in Texaq >vhich MARCUS
believes was in Dallas and possibly called the 'Xarousel".
Ho indicated he had "eyorythlng” at tiie nigh-|; club including
gambling. RUBY told M^CUS if he ever passed through Dallas,
he should stop in at ROBY's, plght club.
MARCUS stated RUBY was alone and appeared to have
been on vacation but may have been friendly w^th the employees
in the gambling section of the Tropipana f
MARCUS further state^ the pee ting lasted only about
ten minutes and no other questions were asked or other information
obtained. No radical or political type statements were made
by RUBY nor were there any indications he b^lodgod to any
particular organizations*
MARCUS described ^ACK RUBY as follows j
Race
Sex
Nationality
Age
Height
Weight
Bfuild
Hair
Accent
Complexion
White
Male
American
lUd-fortles
5’11»
175 pounds
Medium to large
Brownish, balding slightly
Midwestern rather than Texan
Ealr
44-1639 ^
^ 11/24/63 .. Evanstoa, Illinois p„, f CG 44-645
SAs PASSING P. LOGAN
br DANIEL P. BLAKB/nav 11/29/63
Tfcu docitB*M coMlalBB n«lth»r r«caB«*Kd«Uan* |t«r ol Ih. PBI, tl !• ll*« »r«p*rtr ol tha FBI and 1 b laqaad «o
yww agaacr; It o«d tt« OMIbiiIb or* roI Is b« dtatrlbvtH sststd* Vn>r, assnejr*
193
DL 44-X639 -
CG 44*645 :
2
; Cliar:xctorl6tip|9
• Appo;irp^ to boon ot \
z o;itroctldn. AJpo
dOQcrXbQd PQ n grogarlous
tj^pp' pp 4 PP ■ ©irtrovprt •
Hr. UARCUS adylccd ubon the ghoptl ng 4 pcXdontt %n
Dallas, Texas, took place cpncorplns OSI7AU5 by a
.JACK RUBY, Noyeaber 24, 1263, tb® papp UfCCDS as being,
faniliar and T7hon l^o paw the newspapo? pictorQ pf JACK
RUBHISTEIN, . it bore p pljiapp fopepbl^nce %p the $DBY he
met in Havana, Cuba/ tO ‘
«
194
FD-302 (n«-v. I-2S-90)
ac
^ ’ FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGC ON
Xa — '
I Dare Hovenvber 30, 19S3
CliAREMCS A. RECTOR, 422 Connally Street, Sulpher
Springs, Texas, advised SA JAMES L. V?3XIiIAI4SOS he v;as in
Houston .temporarily in connection witti h is automohlle trans~>
He advised he has Xnown JACK. RUBY as a cl\ib manager
in Daaias since ^cmt 1950 and has frequented his places of
business since then.
ge advised he \/&it to Cuba for two days in late
1959 a nd Ine^lv 1960 he was hacX Xn Dallas and v/ent ^ the
^eqa5"^ub and saw RTIBY^ Ha mentioned he had been to Cuba an d
RITR Y stated he had .Verentlvlheen to Cuba himself, as he and
‘S oiae^ssociat^ were trying to get some gambling concessions c^t
it did not work out.
He stated he v/as at the Vegas Club on this occasion
with CH SgTER liYSRS (phonetic) , a head vraiter who resides in an
apartment r^ou^the 5000 hlocX of Hall Street in Dallas. Ho
said MYERS appeared to he well acquainted with RU3Y.
RECTOR stated that he had nO other 'Information con-
cerning RUBY, as his Icnowledge of him is so limited.
ce IWSO
On __ll= 2 .s= 63 _-at ,^-Hp.i.s.ton.,. .Te-as File # UQ :
oy Date dictated l_l-,30-fe3
this do=urt«al crntalnB nnllh.r ri^con^jndatlonn iior conclu 9 lar>B o( Iho mi. Il Ib Ih* proirartr of Ih'* FDl on<f Is locin.J lo
>oir c.g*.-ncr; II o"<t i»« contwnlB or. not to b« dlBtrlbii(<rd outside ro'if ctaoncir.
JFK Exhibit F-582
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, I would also ask that JFK
Exhibit F-581, which is a postcard written from Jack Ruby to Alice
Nichols which is dated September 8, 1959, also be made a part and
entered into the record at this point.
195
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK F-581 is ordered into the
record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK Exhibit F-581 follows:]
JFK Exhibit F-581
Chairman Stokes. Now, you have stated that it is your best
recollection that he stayed there a week?
Mr. McWilue. I would say 6 days, not over 6 days.
Chairman Stokes. Could he have stayed longer?
Mr. McWillie. No, I think I took him to the airport.
196
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, I ask that JFK Exhibits F-583,
and F-584, which are blowups, be exhibited at this time and also be
made a part of the record at this point.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK Exhibits F-583 and F-584
are admitted into the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK Exhibits F-583 and F-584 follow:]
JFK Exhibit F-583
197
JFK Exhibit F-584
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, I ask that Mr. Howard Shapiro
of our staff be permitted to approach the easel and explain to the
witness what those exhibits are.
Mr. Preyer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Shapiro.
Mr. Shapiro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
These two exhibits are blowups of materials which the committee
acquired from the Cuban Government earlier this year. What we
have are two cards which indicate two visits.
Mr. Preyer. Just a moment, Mr. Shapiro. I don't believe your
microphone is working.
Mr. Shapiro. Is it working now?
Mr. Preyer. Fine.
Mr. Shapiro. As I said, these exhibits are blowups of materials
which the committee received from the Cuban Government earlier
this year. We have two cards and we have a blowup of the front
side and the back side of each card. The front side of the first card,
the back side of the first card, the front side of the second card, the
back side of the second card.
What these cards indicate are two visits to Cuba by Jack Ruby,
and further they indicate the dates of those visits. The first card
indicates that Jack Ruby entered Cuba on August 8, 1959, the date
of entry being written in on the back of the card. The front of the
card indicating that Jack Ruby left the United States from New
Orleans.
The back of the card also indicates that Jack Ruby left Cuba on
this visit on September 11, 1959, therefore, the card indicating that
Jack Ruby was in Cuba from August 8 to September 11, 1959.
198
The second card indicates that Jack Ruby entered Cuba on Sep-
tember 12, 1959, and left on the 13th of September 1959, and the
front side of the card would indicate that his entry from the United
States was from Miami, Fla.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. OK. Mr McWillie, do you understand
Mr. McWilue. Yes sir, I understand.
Chairman Stokes [continuing]. That gentleman's testimony?
Mr. McWillie. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. Now, does that information help refresh your
recollection, first, as to whether Jack Ruby came in August and
left in September, and also whether he remained there over a
period of 6 days?
Mr. McWillie. Sir, he stayed there 6 days, as far as I can
remember. One of them said September what to — to August to
September, what date was that?
Chairman Stokes. August 8 was his entrance date, a departure
date of the 11th — September 11.
Mr. McWilue. Oh, no, no, he wasn’t there that long.
Chairman Stokes. He wasn’t there that long?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. During the period of time that he was there,
did he leave the country and come back again during that 6-day
period?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would ask that
JFK exhibit F-588, which is a report confirming that the signa-
tures **Jack Ruby” appearing on the two travel cards as well as the
post card to Alice Nichols, be entered into the record.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibit F-588, is entered
into the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibit F-588 follows:]
199
JFK Exhibit F-588
Charles C. Scott
DOCUMENT EXAMINER
.cpmohc
AM* COOC
• UITK StO
• 0« OHAMO AVCMU«
Kansas City. Missouri o4io«
REPORT ON DOCUMENT EXAMINATION
September 22 , 1978
TO:
Select Committee on Assassinations
U.S. House of Representatives
3342 House Office Building, Annex 2
Washington, D.C. 20515
Re: Jack Ruby
Sirs:
Following are the results of the document examination and
comparison you requested:
A. DOCUIiENTS EXAMINED
1. Two color photographs (one life-size and the other
enlarged) of a card entitled ’’Tarjeta De Identidad/Cuba*' for PAA
Flight No. 415, dated *'9/12" and signed "Jack Ruby" .
2. Two color photographs (one life-size and the other
enlarged) of a card entitled "Tarjeta De Identidad/Cuba" for
Delta Flight 751 dated "Aug" and signed "Jack Ruby". These
photographs are apparently photographs of a signature that
is a carbon copy of an original signature.
3. Original post card addressed to Alice Nichols, 8707
Redondo, Dallas, Texas, dated 9/8/59 and signed "Jack".
200
Select Committee on Assassinations, September 22, 197-8, Page Two
4. Check on Merchants State Bank, Dallas, Texas, dated
7/26/62, payable to Dallas Times Herald in the amount of $70.00
and signed "Vegas Club, Jack Ruby".
5. Sheet of yellow legal memorandum paper bearing nine
specimen signatures of Jack Ruby and three one sentence para-
graphs in his handwriting dated 7/18/64.
B. QUESTIONS
1. Whether the signatures "Jack Ruby" on the two flight
cards. Items 1 and 2 above, are in the same handwriting and
were written by the same person as the signatures "Jack Ruby"
on Items 4 and 5 which were submitted as bearing known genuine
signatures of Jack Ruby.
2. Whether the post card. Item 3 above, was written and
signed by the same person as Items 4 and 5 which were submitted
as bearing the known genuine signatures and handwriting of
Jack Ruby.
C. OPINION
After a careful examination and comparison of the submitted
documents, I am of the opinion the signatures "Jack Ruby" on
the two flight cards, Items 1 and 2 above, are in the same
handwriting and were written by the same person as the signatures
"Jack Ruby" on Items 4 and 5.
I am also of the opinion the post card. Item 3 above,
was entirely written and signed by the same person as Items
4 and 5 which were submitted as bearing the known genuine
signatures and handwriting of Jack Ruby.
201
Select Committee on Assassinations, September 22, 1978, Page Three
As far as Items 1 and 2 are concerned, to the extent that
this opinion is based upon the examination of photographs rather
than originals, it is necessarily subject to modificiation should
the originals of Items 1 and 2 subsequently be submitted for
examination and should they reveal contradictory information *
not disclosed by the photographs.
Resp^tfu^y sv^itt
Charles C. Scott
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, in addition to the other exhib-
its, I would like to have entered into the record an FBI report
dated November 29, 1969, concerning the records of the Merchant
State Bank in Dallas as they pertain to Jack Ruby. This exhibit
should be marked JFK exhibit F-585.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibit F-585, is entered
into the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibit F-585 follows:]
202
JFK Exhibit F-585
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTlk^A i iv/m
— /- 29, 1963
The records of the Merchants State Bank, 5217 Ross,
Dallas, reflect the following information: . .
An account in the name of JACS RUBY, 4727 Homer,
Apartment 105, was opened June 26, 1960. RUBY's address was
subsequently changed to 3929 Rawlins. This account is small
and. inactive, with no recent deposits or withdrawals. The only
recent entries are service charges of $1,00 per month. The *
balance at the present time is $35.78.
An account in the name, of the Carousel Club,
1312} Commerce, Dallas, with JACK RUBY listed as the person to
'.draw, on this account, was opened on October 12, 1961, A resume
of this account reflects the following information:
Date
Deposit
Vithdrawal
Balance
9/3(5/63
' .
$188*73
10/4/63
$ 8.82
i 197.55
10/10/63
$24.38
173.17
10/10/63
30.26
203.43
11/11/63
Uy 19/63
33.22
236.65
10.00
246.65
11/20/63
15.00
231.65
11/22/63
.'5,31*87
* 199.78
On July 9, 1958, an account was opened in the name
of the Vegas Club, care of JACK RUBY, 3929 Rawlins, Dallas.
JACK RUBY was the only person authorized to di’aw on this account .
A resume of .this account* reflects the following information:
203
2 ?
DL 44-1639
Date
Deposit
. Withdrawal
Balance
9/30/63
$210.15
10/9/63
One check
160.15
10/10/63
Two checks
81.44
10/16/63
Three checks
63.91
10/22/63
A deposit
minus three checks
resulting
In balance of
263.91
10/29/63
Four checks
134.44
11/6/63
$50.00
84.44
11/8/63
25.00
. ' .59.44
11/11/63
$200.00
259.44
11/12/63
11.65
247.79
11/20/63
25.00
222.79
11/22/63
12.82
209.97
11/25/63
50.00
■ 159.97
Loan records reflect the lol loving addresses for
JACK RUBY from 1958 to the present time:
4160 Hawthorne
4727 Homer
11^16 Jamestown Road
3508 Oak Lawn
3929 Rawlins
On June 26, 1958, JACK RUBY borrowed $1,14R.U0 from this
bank to be repaid In 18 monthly payments. A lien on a 1956
Oldsmoblle secured this loan. Final payment was made on
December 8, 1959* , '
.On December 8, 1959, JACK RUBY borrowed $704.00 to be •
repaid In 12 monthly payments. Final payment was made on
January 2 , 1961. A lien on a 1956 Oldsmoblle secured this loan.
On December 29, 1960, a loan was made to S. D« RUBY,
11616 Jamestown Road, Dallas, In the amount of $3,360.00, with
JACK RUBY listed as a co-signer on the note. The loan was repaid
In 24 monthly payments with the final Installbent on March 16, «
1962.
• • - n “
. On February 14, 1961, JACK RUBY borrowed $636.00, which
he repaid In 12 monthly payments, with the last Installment "on
March 9, 1962. Security on this loan was a lien on a 1956
Oldsmoblle.
204
DL 44-1639
On January 31, 1963, JACK RUBY borrowed $1,375.00,
giving as security a lien on a 1960 Oldsmobi.le , vehicle identifi-
cation No. 607T07749. He has made ten monthly payments of
$76.50 each on this loan, with the last payment having. been
made on November 11, 1963.
On June 1, 1962, JACK RUBY borrowed $410.00 on a
short-term basis, which was repaid on July 11, 1962. No security
was required on this loan.
T-
>aU| ^
On April 27, 1959, JACK ROBY, whose address at that
ime was 4160 Hawthorne, rented safety deposit box No. 448.
UTRTLE .CHANCE, no address, was listed as his agent on the ■
safety deposit box record, but her name was revoked as his
agent on June 6, 1960.* The files reflect RUBY was admitted to
the safety deposit box vault on the following dates|^
Jmi T’l-
'IUaam-
VM2.
'Uwui-
May 7 and(^
June 2 and^
July Ik^ aud
AugustCki»
1959
1959 .
fjmiMf)
September 4 and 1959
October 28, 1959
March 18, 1960
April 12, 1960
November 14, 1960
March 1961
The file reflects no entry after March 21, 1961.
I
i! .
RUBY has no savings account at the Merchants State .
Bank.
The above records are confidential and will be
produ^d only upon the issuance of a subpoena duces tecum.
V. P^SCHUMACHER, President, Merchants . State Bank, 5217 Ross,
Dallas,^exaSi- is the proper person to subpoena to produce
these records .
205
Chairman Stokes. That exhibit will reflect information concern-
ing Jack Ruby's use of safety deposit box No. 448. Among other
dates listed, that exhibit will indicate that Jack Ruby was admitted
to the safety deposit box on August 20, 1959, and September 4,
1959.
Mr. Chairman, I would also like to enter into the record at this
point the FBI report by Agent Charles Flynn, which is the FBFS
record of the status of Jack Ruby as a potential criminal inform-
ant.
I would like to have this record entered into evidence as JFK
exhibit F-586.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibit F-586 is entered into
the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibit F-586 follows:]
35-379 0 - 79-14
JFK Exhibit F-586
DIr-3
l>C=5K) - SACT“
Dallaa^ Tejna
Re:
- On tha basis* of prell at iiar?^ contac ty-a iHl ' - li ri^a tma tlop
; c3evelqpadt~*to daTe. I recGr:nmd“ the cEpIriofned’lndtvtdtial* Top
Irif c.jL'^rrtr^dsveiyp-.'it^t r ‘ ®ie Toi'loelng- Inforoztlon Is -set fortli
for yoirr consideration (if additional space required. Insert
nerressary numbered pages, as 2a, 2b, etc., vlth Identifying-
cub‘-headtns)"r^
A. :DAT5 FOR -per IRISr CARD; • %
1. P«n* Kaiac-^ 3 *
а.
3-
4.
5-
б.
T-
&*♦ - ZSate"Develqpsdr-
9. Itoewn- -to Special Agent*
10, Place of* Contact - ^aMiS^
11. Restrictions on Contact -
B. RJr^SICAL DSSCRimOH- • •
Rasidemre Address ^d^TA£/^//€^
Residence Telephonr -;^/j^
Bualnosa Addres* A}t^Ai>C/o 6 j^Tc%;€~, 1 ti/^U'i^
Bosiness Telephciis *- ^77S^ -v *
CoTerage (ITSM7, VSTA, BEaROSS, etc.)
Rsca—l (v/j/r d
I'-- Full Hame' and Aliases -
*» /•’&■ f-f-J f. *
2 ; fate and . Place 'of .Birth
3e Height' • ^ ■
4. Weight >
207
6.- Hair -
7v f> ? c ^
1
8.' Ccvnplexlon - /v*l *••' **^
9V Race^"- W »>/tC
lO,' Scars^and Karks -
11;, Occupation ~ // / r-e CA*/l t
~ r >Cl A ? £’
PAST-HISTCKT: / - • -py ^
c //>/ 7
6 j i . 6,
•
•(Suosary^Blcetclr, lncli:^ner-peert~reaidence« an<S occujfek— -
tlono; relatives, areas wittrK^clr rcirtllarf criminal' Bpeclaltles,
habitSi record: or phTClTral 'and'-ncntHl dlBorclerir,” addle tloir to* nar-
cotics, alcohol, sex peirveroion, dcaestio problems^ etc,, which
may have hearlns on mental and esiotional stability and relj^blllt^
D- OFFICE IJtDICES CKECIC: .•
■ ■■ I ... . - • ■ -
(Include here, with Idcntlfylnc flic references, only
backeround Iriforcation relative to subject,)
208
E, EUH£AU^OE!niH;n7BiT)ICgS-CK2S^ ■
*'(lf deolrable,* attsrctr 'letter' -to'* EureaTr-spHclflcally-
Btatlns Xacts vhlch Indicate Bureau tllos contain information
not Included in field office files; indicate action below. } -
'{\o
F. CREDIT CHECK; ^
(Include baclcgro^d data, not merely whether credit soo^
or bad,)^V
V i/ic-4C£(
.iciAi c£fcAL-i^ o-r^v ^
t,. -^sy,
209
DL - 3
0 , LOCAL CRIPJKAL- CHECKS'^ • . t
(include efforts to obtain photograph, ond If obtained,
attach in exhibit envelope.)
ifl-'
H, rsj’ ID£!?gIFieATloy’ KECOmiT ’ ■
(If* up-to-date transcript la available, attach; If not,
attach Form FD-9i checkins request for photoGi'apb, If not other-
wlae available; Indicate action taken,) J -
4
210
X. ygUTARY SEHVICE RECORD;
(S^tate whether* PCI hao clll'tary' rcccrtt;* record
se rvlc e- TTmb er and" ctateirentrir of. PCI rerardlnc' type or* discharge/
court narttals*;* rreatEents tor" Biczn:El or*nervaea disorders'* • -ir
desirable^ attach letter to appropriate orrice requesting rnlXl^
tary record check; othert/lBe, Indicate basis for conclusion record
check unneceoeary.) ^ ^
hi/. -
J, CRiraWAL ASSOCIATES;-
(List, irlth-ldcntliytiv7*PB*2 or-^ PD numbers and criminal
specialties, and prepare “inde:;: -cards . on crlnlnals well-known to
PCI, as-'dlsclosed' by record checicc and Interviews*) •
P . . ~ . ■ jT,! -r ^ yi ^
3 He fS^s^r /chh^ /’3/)l JT ^ /J c
- 5 .
K. PROCUCTIVITy-TO- DA^
( Inc lude*, *wlttr separsto* para graph" for" each'^ca'se* *ril«
iTivolved, Ti:eld'*and itoeau-rilo numbers, titles endt characters^
poirltlve InfoTEsrttOT ItirnlBhcdi c:r indicated- by office Indtrccs*
check. Show Bl£n:;lf tcancs and value of inf onastlon- or^ o t tT gr *
assistance, with resultant -statl-ctlcn-. . If ‘Itif ornsytiern is*-ln. In-
vestigative report, show naas of ^Crent’, date or report, and re- •
portln5"offl:ce* If positive InfotMtlcn furnlohed, but not yetr
In file, attach fully. e:iscuted Ponno FD-209> with .copies for
appropriate case files.) . * ' ‘
212
. L. COVERaGEY ' - • ■
(Shov tasln for llQtln{j PCI for coverage In each
classification aho>n under "A“^abovo,)
O,
VCT
AOTSHD 0?- EUHHAU JURIS DIC7I0?fr -
(specify vhl^ claDsiflcatlono have heen explained*)
ut*^ a^iu,-uy(. /
I or A<ty
1
213
■ DL - 3 ‘ ,
r, ADVISED- OP" cc!:?ide?:tial R£L.^Tior?SHirr • - -
■(incluxTe lirrEnpcenentra" Tor dl cere eV ■telephone "and' per —
Bonal contacta, rentrlctiona on. ccnxactu, advise 3hould not con-
tact office personally, advise rcGardlns rurnlDhln £5 Infonnatlon
aJuZu^
A U /!
Q, ARRAHG£M52rrs ?o?. p;tYrs>rrsr --
(include any“ dlscnsslonc-ta da'te'resardln.TTpay^^nts on
COD basis or for expanses, >{hethcr'TCI appears Teceptlvo^' advise
that'paysicnbs are Inocpe In accordance t:ltb conditions stated In
Section* 107 Msniail of Inatmctlcno. If payments made to date,
give details with Icentlfying file numbers an d da tes.) ^
u, ^ a.W^ CH.U CpCi
- 8 -
214
R. co:;cLusio:ts a;;d R£co-c3?!’CATions : 9'<1 /V-
* •
215
Office Is/iemorandum
'O : DALLAS (drSSS)
TROM : SA _ cHAHCSS W. FLYIii;
SUBJECT: jack LSON ruby
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
DATE: 5/if/59
□ c. Os. .
S3 J»CI 1 -lp«
216
ujpC6 I ' A -^ T/lGYcZuduiTl • united states government
DAUjo
FROM : SA > CiAKLES rLlCiTJ
6/29/59
L ici 1 I si
jpct I I pm
217
Office ■■'bAe'morandum • united
TO : SAC DALLAS
ntoM : CHAHLES W. FLWN
^ JACK' LEON HUBY
STATES GCVERr:\z • :T
PATE: 7/2A/‘3l.'
CZJci L_Im
E3 pci CZDpsx
218
Office ']>/iemo7a7iduy;i •
TO : SAC dallx\s
FxOM : *\ Charles Fl3’n:i
SUBJECT: ^^ACK LEON HUST, PCI
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
DATEr 9/4/59
• I l et I I sl
ExIpci □psi
!•
219
Office 'IVleinOYCludu'/Tl • united states government
"^o ! SAC
,DALL.*vS’
DATE:
10/5/59
.
•
. □=.
□«
ruOM : s*-
Charl-3 T/. Flynn
E3pc.
SUBJECT:
j;.CK iz:ou nuar, ?ci
220
221
Chairman Stokes, I would also have the committee know that
this exhibit will point out the fact that the record indicates that
Charles Flynn, the FBI agent, had personal contact with Jack Ruby
in Dallas, Tex. on August 6 and on August 31 of 1959.
In summary, what these records will tend to indicate is that Jack
Ruby was in Dallas, Tex., on August 6, August 21, August 31, and
September 4, 1959. Therefore, if the Cuban records are correct.
Jack Ruby was in Havana, Cuba, on August 8, 1959; he must have
left Cuba and returned to Dallas and traveled to Cuba again prior
to the September 11 departure date that has been mentioned
earlier.
Now, Mr. McWillie, if Mr. Ruby made a 1-day trip in and out of
the country, would you be able to tell us what that trip was about?
Mr. McWilue. If he did make a trip I would not know it, sir; and
I would think I would know it, and I didnT see Jack Ruby after he
left that one time.
Chairman Stokes. Now, tell us what the two of you did in Cuba
during that 6-day period together?
Mr. McWilue. Well, I worked every night, and as a rule he
would hang around the casino. Maybe once or twice he might have
gone to see a show or something, but he was around me nearly all
the time.
Chairman Stokes. But during the day what would the two of you
do?
Mr. McWilue. Well, I was working at night and I slept most of
the day. If he got up early or not I wouldn't know. He would
usually meet me out at the casino after I had gone and opened up.
Chairman Stokes. What time did you go to the casino in the
evening?
Mr. McWillie. I think about 8 o'clock.
Chairman Stokes. And how late would you work?
Mr. McWilue. Sometimes 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning.
Chairman Stokes. And you say he would hang around you out at
the casino?
Mr. McWilue. Yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. And during that period of time, he didn't
smoke or drink, did he?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir, he didn't.
Chairman Stokes. But he would just stand around; is that it?
Mr. McWilue. Stand around talking to people and carrying on
conversations.
Chairman Stokes. Did he know other people there?
Mr. McWilue. Sir?
Chairman Stokes. Did he know other people there?
Mr. McWilue. No, he didn't know anyone there.
Chairman Stokes. You wfere the only person he knew in
Havana?
Mr. McWilue. He knew Panitz. I think Panitz was there at the
time, too, Meyer Panitz from Memphis; he knew him, he was from
Dallas, too.
Chairman Stokes. Was Panitz there during that period of time?
Mr. McWilue. Pardon me, I am almost positive that he was.
Chairman Stokes. That he was?
Mr. McWillie. That he was working in Havana.
35-379 0 - 79 - 15
222
Chairman Stokes. What type of work did Panitz do?
Mr. McWillie. He was a casino worker.
Chairman Stokes. And for which casino?
Mr. McWillie. I think he worked at the Capri.
Chairman Stokes. Now, did I understand you to say earlier that
you took Ruby back to the airport?
Mr. McWillie. I am sure I did, yes, sir; I would do that, yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. And where was he going when he left?
Mr. McWilue. He was going back home, he said, to Dallas.
Chairman Stokes. And do you know whether or not he did go
back home to Dallas?
Mr. McWilue. I would have to say he did. There was no way I
would know but I would have to say he did go back to Dallas.
Chairman Stokes. Now, you have told us that Panitz was in
Havana at the same time you and Ruby were there?
Mr. McWilue. I would have to say so, yes.
Chairman Stokes. Is it possible that Panitz was not there and
that he was in Miami and that you called him?
Mr. McWillie. No, I don't think so.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, I ask that an exhibit marked
JFK F-587, which is an interview with Meyer Panitz, be entered
into and made a part of the record at this point.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibit F-587 is ordered into
the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibit F-587 follows:]
223
FEDERAL BtfREAO OF ISVESnOATSON
Dat e Jac^ary 14, 1964
' MKZER Ri(pAHITZ, Apart2»nX,.2ir~i20^1bert.
furnished the fol^ovlng infcOTatlon: fT'_P^ — Tj\<
•' y ■■ i
iB the suacEor of 1959 PAIJITZ was working in the
Booker T, Ix>unge in Hianl; Beach, Florida. During this tisie
PAKITZ received a p-hone call frcx D. C, MC Yni«ttIE* KC V1LI«1£
was then working in Cuba. MC WXljLlS a'dvised PANX'IZ that
JACK RUBF* had visited hia in Cuba and was then in Mlaici Beach*
; PANITZ had frca Dall as. Te xas > -
PANITZ contacted RUB7 at Vc-lftes Resta^ant, 21-
Sheet and Collins, Hiasi Beaih, Florida. PASZTZ believes
RUB7 was In Hlani Beach two or three da^^s and that he
visited with RC3T cn two occasions.
PANira recalls that RUBT had said he had been in - ^
Cuba on a pleasure trip and was returning to Dallas, Texas.
^ PANSTZ dees not recall the hotel R^Y stayed in
adalle In Miami Beach.
'■ PANXTZ dees not recall the x^nth he saw RI7BY,
but is soscewhat certain it was in the suexor of 1959.
PANITZ has no knowledge of possible Cuban
connections on the part of RUBY.
DL 44-1639
On 1/10/64 at Las Ve gas, N evada Pile » LY 44-48
— . arF”
b y SAs THOMAS tf. ALT fe WAYNE’ H.IPAK^D ate dictate d 1/14/64
This document contains neither recemendatiens nor conclusions
of the FBI. It 13 the property cf the FBI and is loaned to
your agency; it and Its contents are net to be distributed
outside your agency.
JFK Exhibit F-587
224
Chairman Stokes. Would counsel hand me that exhibit?
Mr. McWillie, this exhibit is an FBI interview of Meyer Panitz in
which Panitz says that he had known McWillie from Dallas, Tex.
Panitz says he contacted Ruby at Wolfie's Restaurant at Twenty-
first Street and Collins, Miami Beach, Fla. Panitz believes Ruby
was in Miami Beach 2 or 3 days and visited with Ruby on two
occasions. Panitz recalls Ruby said he had been in Cuba on a
pleasure trip and was returning to Dallas, Tex.
Panitz does not recall the hotel room Ruby stayed in while in
Miami Beach. Panitz does not recall the month he saw Ruby but is
somewhat certain it was in the summer of 1959. Panitz had no
knowledge of possible Cuban connections on the part of Ruby but
that, he says Panitz received a phone call from McWillie and
McWillie was then working in Cuba.
McWillie advised Panitz that Jack Ruby had visited him in Cuba
and was then in Miami Beach.
Having heard what Mr. Panitz told the FBI about your calling
him, would you now change your statement that Panitz was
then
Mr. McWillie. I thought he was in Cuba. I didn^t know he was
in Miami. I thought that Panitz was in Cuba because I know he
worked there.
Chairman Stokes. What then would have been your reason for
calling Panitz and letting him know that Jack Ruby was going to
be there?
Mr. McWillie. If I called Panitz, I don't recall it. I don't recall a
conversation with Panitz in Miami.
Chairman Stokes. You don't recall having called Panitz?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir; I do not.
Chairman Stokes. This doesn't refresh your recollection either?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir. I thought Panitz was in Havana when
Ruby was over there, and I still think he was.
Chairman Stokes. Did Ruby carry anything to Panitz for you?
Mr. McWilue. Did he carp^ anything to Panitz?
Chairman Stokes. To Panitz for you?
Mr. McWillie. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Now, you have told us that, to the best of your
recollection, you cannot recall Jack Ruby leaving the country and
coming back in again?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir. No, I never saw him again after he left
Cuba.
Chairman Stokes. Now, I ask again, Mr. Chairman, that we
direct the witness' attention to JFK exhibits F-583 and F-584
which have been referred to earlier.
Mr. McWillie, I would direct your attention to the left-hand card
of JFK exhibit F-584, which indicates that Jack Ruby left Havana
on September 11, 1959.
I also direct your attention to the card on the right which is the
back side of the card showing at the bottom of the photographic
blowup of JFK exhibit F-583, which indicates that Jack Ruby
entered Cuba on September 12, 1959, left again on September 13,
1959. The front side of that card shows that on that trip that Jack
Ruby had come from Miami, therefore, the two cards tgJten togeth-
er show that Jack Ruby left Cuba on September 11, 1959, that he
225
went to Miami, returned to Cuba on September 12, and then going
on to New Orleans on September 13.
In addition to that, the committee has a letter here from Immi-
gration Service which was sent to this committee, which confirms
the fact that Jack Ruby left Cuba on September 11, 1959, went to
Miami, returning on September 12 and going on to New Orleans on
September 13.
Mr. Chairman, I would like this letter from INS entered into the
record at this time as JFK exhibit F-589.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibit F-589 is entered into
the record at this time.
[The above referred to JFK exhibit F-589 follows:]
226
JFK Exhibit F-589
OrnCC OF THE COMMiSSlONER
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
Washington, D.C. 20536
CO 703.1412
inY n m-
Honorable G. Robert Blakey
Chief Coimsel and Director
Select Committee on Assassinations
Room 3380 A
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Mr. Blakey:
Reference is made to your letter of April 7, 1978 requesting access to
all documents generated by or in the possession of this Service concerning
the Warren Commission Kjchibits No. 1442 and No. 1443 relating to Jack L.
Ruby's trip to Havana, Cuba in September 1959.
Attached is a xeroxed copy of record of departure of Pan American Airways
flight 415 of September 12, 1959 from Miami, Florida destined to Havana,
Cuba, and a copy of the record of Mr. Ruby's departure as a passenger on
that flight.
Attached is a xeroxed copy of general declaration and record of arrival
of Delta Airlines Fll^t 750 of September 13, 1959 from Havana, Cuba to
New Orleans, Louisiana, and a copy of Mr. Ruby's arrival as a pasnenger
on that flight.
The above are the only records relating to the departure and the arrival
of the subject.
Sincerely,
008416
Commissioner
227
{ •*> .i MU •. rill Miu
riui,itA|. BUHrAtf OP WfLiriCA' *11
IaJiMiU i4A?
D«'«
1
onsfcr A» b.vta, AooJaton* chlor. R*«oras
Aaolnlotrattdfi and ^fjrMtluu Soetlont Xaalcr«aien mvl
|]atut*al*:aclon fiomw. SO V-M Ureodwtiir. York City*
advtood Si)««tal Aatnc V7U.XAM V, tURTtU on Ooctcbor 3*
UviC tholr tHtevrlo Mflo-tt titat on<i JACK WlTf*
472Y Uillaa* 7- ksa« djt'rrtttd (UnnL* Florida *
on Ewfitirr^'r 1?> Vjy>, fan AirorJean Alrunoa
Flltfl'*C Ai;> bound for ll&vimu, Cubo,
0 . .. you Y ork* Wow Voi* , Iff
8A VILUAK 7. umiV tvoo
V I. Ill — ^,-.. . 1 ,,I I, ,
PM «M « l««w< «•
Commission Exhibit No. 1442
228
szamr a, davu* Assittwit chur«
Administration an4 Liforaation Saction^ iK^cratton «nd
NQtursUxbtion U U««t DroatltiM, Ktu^ork* Utw
York on Oaooidwr t> 1^3 sdvissd spaoifti Acsfit- UKltlAN
7. KATiTZtl Uwt thulr raoorda r«rioet thot ont/<aACK L.
nuSY, A7CT iKMcr* VeUai« Vous, arrlvod in Hub Oris uu,
Louisiana, from llayaiw, cu)>a, aboard Doita Alrliliof
Fiiaht IKMbtr oo 947t«ater ^3* A950, <!
Ogg
232
233
234
Chairman Stokes, Now, Mr. McWillie, let me ask you, in light of
this additional documentation with reference to Mr. Ruby^s trips,
does this in any way refresh your recollection?
Mr. McWillie. I think you said, sir, that, didn't you say that he
came in on the 5th of August and left on the 11th? Did you say
that?
Chairman Stokes. On the 8th was the original trip, the docu-
ment shows.
Mr. McWilue. From the 5th to the 11th? That was 6 days. That
is the only time that I have seen Jack Ruby in Cuba. I thought
when he left there he went right straight home to Dallas. I had no
idea why he went to New Orleans.
Chairman Stokes. You have no knowledge of such trip?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir; none whatever.
Mr. Sawyer. Would you yield?
Chairman Stokes. Yes.
Mr. Sawyer. I think there is confusion. He said arrived on the
8th and left on the 11th. It was the 8th of August and he left on
the 11th of September, so it was not 6 days as the witness
Mr. McWillie. I thought the first time you said it, he got there
the 6th of August and left on the 11th of August. You didn't say
that?
Chairman Stokes. Sir, we will try and clear it up.
Mr. Shapiro, would you again approach the easel?
Mr. McWilue. Because I know for a fact he wasn't there over 6
days when he visited me.
Chairman Stokes. We will have the
Mr. McWillie. I couldn't have stood it that long.
Chairman Stokes. We will have the gentleman try to clear it up.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Shapiro.
Mr. Shapiro. These cards here indicate a trip on Jack Ruby
entering Cuba on August 8, 1959, and leaving on September 11.
Therefore, the card indicates that Jack Ruby was there for a period
of 1 month and 3 days.
Mr. McWilue. No way, he wasn't there not over 6 days. I took
him to the airport.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. McWillie, does that clear it up?
Mr. McWilue. That is clear all right but that is not right,
because when he came to visit me he stayed 6 days at the most, he
stayed 6 days and there is some foulup with that ticket or some-
thing, If he had stayed there a month, I would say a month, I
wouldn't be ashamed to say it. Jack Ruby was the kind of fellow
that 6 days would be long enough to be around him. I am sure he
wasn't there a month. [Laughter.]
Chairman Stokes. You are pretty sure then?
Mr. McWilue. I am riot trying to be smart, sir.
Chairman Stokes. I understand.
Mr. McWilue. I am telling it like it is.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever ask Mr. Ruby to get you four
guns from Ray Brentley's gun store and send them to you in Cuba?
Mr. McWilue. No, sir; I have been asked that a dozen times and
I didn't do that. In the first place. Jack Ruby couldn't have sent
235
any guns to Cuba and I couldn't have gotten them in Cuba. If I
had, I hate to think what would have happened to me.
Chairman Stokes. You have been asked about this a dozen times,
you say. You are aware then that Jack Ruby gave this testimony to
the Warren Commission?
Mr. McWillie. No, I am not aware he gave the testimony. But I
have been asked by reporters and magazine writers and different
people.
Chairman Stokes. Now
Mr. McWillie. Fm trying to think — now, who else asked me
that?
Chairman Stokes. Here is Jack Ruby's testimony to the Warren
Commission, volume 5, page 201, says that you had called Jack
Ruby from Cuba, asking him to pick up four Cobra pistols at Ray
Brentley's hardware store and send to you.
According to Jack Ruby, you were concerned about the new
regime coming in, you wanted some protection. Your testimony is
that this never happened?
Mr. McWillie. This never happened, sir, and there is no way I
could call Jack Ruby and ask him to send guns over there because
every call was monitored in Havana, every call, and I would hate
to get caught with a gun in Cuba when I was there.
Chairman Stokes. How about in Las Vegas?
Mr. McWillie. He sent me a gun there, yes, and I didn't take it
out.
Chairman Stokes. Sir? Pardon me.
Mr. McWillie. I called him. They were having a lot of holdups
there. I was working on the late shift. I would get up at 2 o'clock in
the morning and get off at 10 and the holdup men had beaten
several fellows up because they didn't have enough money for
them, and so I called Jack and asked Jack to send me a gun out
there, and in the meantime my kids were small and my wife
wouldn't let me take the gun out and so it went back.
Chairman Stokes. So you never picked up the gun that he sent
you?
Mr. McWillie. No, I never did.
Chairman Stokes. Did he get that gun from Ray Brentley's?
Mr. McWilue. Sir?
Chairman Stokes. Did he get that gun from Ray Brentley's?
Mr. McWilue. I think he did, yes.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you.
I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the
balance of my time.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you.
Are there any further questions from the members of the panel?
Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Preyer. Mr. Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. If I may have just 1 minute with the chief counsel
before proceeding.
[A brief recess was taken.]
Mr. Preyer. Mr. Fithian is recognized.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. After you left Cuba,
what was your relationship with Jack Ruby, Mr. McWillie?
236
Mr. Me Willie. After I left Cuba, I stayed in Miami at my moth-
er's home until about the 1st of June, and I drove from Miami to
Las Vegas. I had a job at the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe, Nev.
When I got to Dallas, I stayed overnight with Jack Ruby. Got up,
oh, I got in there about nine and got up at five in the morning and
left. I drove on up to Cal-Neva Lodge and went to work there on
the 15th and then I went to, after that was over in September, I
went down to Reno and was assistant manager at the Riverside
Hotel. During the period I was there, I think I got a couple letters
from Jack Ruby telling me about a new place he had and how nice
it was and this and that. He sent me some razor blades that just
came out. He seemed to be very proud of these blades, and he was
going to get a distributorship for them. I may have gotten two
letters from him, I donT know.
Mr. Fithian. So now, what you are saying is after you got back
to the United States, you stayed overnight with Jack Ruby, you
received a couple letters from him while you were in Reno and
that he, upon your request, sent you a gun in Las Vegas, which you
did not pick up.
Mr. Me Willie. This was later on, sir, this was later on after I
left Reno. I left Reno in — let me see, right before Christmas in
1962, I took my family and we drove to Miami and visited with my
mother, and then I came back to Vegas and went to work at the —
are you ready, sir?
Mr. Fithian. Yes.
Mr. McWillie. I came back to Vegas and went to work at the
Thunderbird Hotel, I believe, in February, the early part of Febru-
ary 1963.
Mr. Fithian. Did you have any other personal contact with Jack
Ruby
Mr. McWilue. Fm getting to that now, sir.
Mr. Fithian. OK.
Mr. McWillie. Then after I was there a while, I got a call from
Jack Ruby that he was having trouble with a union named the
AGVA. He wanted to know if I knew anybody who knew the
president of the union. It just so happened that I knew, a friend of
mine named Bill Miller was entertainment director for the Hilton
Hotel, I think it was. I called Bill. I managed a casino for him in
Reno. In the meantime, he left and went to Vegas, and I called Bill
and I said. Bill, I have a friend of mine in Dallas who has some
trouble with the AGVA, it is some kind of an entertainment union.
I said he wants to know if you know if I know anyone who knows
the president, and I am calling you on account of that and if you
could help him, I would appreciate it.
I didn't hear any more from Bill Miller, but a couple days later,
the next day maybe, I got a call from Ruby. He was just thanking
me overwhelmingly. Well, he must have called me five or six times
during that period thanking me for getting this straightened out
for him. It must have been a minor thing; I don't know.
Mr. Fithian. Let me see if I understand you correctly. He called
you once to ask if you could help out with the American Guild of
Variety Actors problem, and you made a call to Bill Culler, did you
say?
Mr. McWillie. Bill Miller.
237
Mr. Fithian. Miller,
Mr, McWillie. He called me from Dallas.
Mr. Fithian. And you made one call and then dismissed it from
your mind and then for five or six or seven additional calls, Ruby
called you to
Mr. McWillie. He called me every day for 4 or 5 days after that
thanking me every time, I finally told him, I said, Jack, forget it. I
said, I just did you a favor. Fd do it for anybody, and then that was
it.
Mr. Fithian. Did he know in advance that you had this connec-
tion that could do him some good? I am curious as to why he called
you on a labor matter.
Mr. McWillie. I don't really know, sir. He just probably thought
I could help him with it. I don't know why he thought that, but he
called me anyway.
Mr. Fithian. Did anyone else ever tell you or did you ever learn
that Jack Ruby had contacted other people in regard to the AGVA
dispute, the labor dispute?
Mr. McWillie. No. sir. He had contacted other people? If he did,
he didn't tell me.
Mr. Fithian. Did anyone else that Jack contacted contact you
and let you know that Jack was having this problem?
Mr. McWillie. No, no. The only time I ever heard of it was when
he called me.
Mr. Fithian. The only input you had or the only indication you
had of the labor problem was a single phone call from Jack Ruby?
Mr. McWilue. That's right, and I told him that I didn't know
who the president was, but I thought I knew a man that would
know. Incidentally, this man was a very good friend of mine and he
got very upset about it, about me having Ruby call him and what
happened. I told him, I said, well, I didn't know he was that kind of
a fellow which I didn't.
Mr. Fithian. What was your reaction when you learned that
Jack Ruby had shot Oswald?
Mr. McWilue. Well, I tell you, like I said I was working late at
night and I was in my bedroom asleep and my wife had a radio or
a TV in the kitchen. She came running in the room waking me up.
She said, ‘'My gosh, come in the kitchen, she said, someone just
shot Oswald," and jokingly I said, “I hope its no one I know." We
went in the kitchen and the announcer said a man named Segal
had shot him. I said, “Well, I don't know him," laughing. All of a
sudden, they said, “We made a mistake, it was a man named Jack
Ruby." I said, “Oh my God, I know this man, my goodness." I told
my wife, well, now, the FBI will be out here. Sure enough, in about
3 hours, the FBI came out.
Mr. Fithian. Besides your wife and the three FBI agents, who
were the other people you talked to, after Ruby shot Oswald, about
this, about the fact you knew Ruby and he had shot Oswald?
Mr. McWilue. Well, several people brought it up that I knew
him. I don't know who they were. I said isn't this an awful thing to
know someone like this and have to go through all this problem
over nothing? That's about the only thing I ever said. It has been
an ordeal for 15 years.
35-379 0 - 79 - 16
238
Mr. Fithian. Mr. McWillie, in your deposition to the committee,
you indicate that you participated in the Fair Play for Cuba Com-
mittee, is that correct?
Mr. McWillie. Sir?
Mr. Fithian. You indicated in your deposition to the committee,
I believe, that you participated in the Fair Play for Cuba Commit-
tee, is that correct?
Mr. McWilue. Before I left here, I was going to get that straight-
ened out. It is on page 121, I think, of paragraph 11 or 12; is that
right? Do you have it in front of you?
Mr. Fithian. I believe you are correct in your citation.
Mr. McWillie. Sir?
Mr. Fithian. I believe you are correct in your citation.
Mr. McWilue. Do you want me to read it to you?
Mr. Fithian. I will be happy to have you straighten it out, if you
can.
Mr. McWillie. I think it is page 121. It says “Subsequent to your
returning to the United States ”
Mr. Fithian. Could you just get the microphone a little closer?
Thank you.
Mr. McWillie. It says, “Subsequent to your returning to the
United States, you were involved in an incident at Miami Airport,
is that correct?”
Subsequent, that means after I left Cuba; right?
Mr. Fithian. Right.
Mr. McWillie. And I answered, “That^s right.”
“Is it fair to characterize you as anti-Castro?” And the answer
here is, which is untrue, “I was in an outfit called Fair Play for
Cuba. I am not proud of it. But, I was just mad.”
I think they got that mixed up. The fellow I had the altercation
with was with the Fair Play, an organization named the Fair Plav
for Cuba. Could that be taken out of this record because I didnT
say that I was with the Fair Play
Mr. Fithian. I believe I have been informed by the staff that the
“he” in the transcript when it got transcribed was attributed to
you and actually it was the person with whom you had some
differences — we will correct the record.
Mr. McWilue. Will this be changed?
Mr. Preyer. Your explanation will be made a part of the record
and the record will be corrected.
Mr. McWilue. It will be changed. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Fithian. I just have one other quick area to explore and
then I will be done.
Mr. McWillie, do you know Earl Ruby?
Mr. McWilue. Earl Ruby. I don't know him intimately. I have
seen him a couple times.
Mr. Fithian. When did you meet him?
Mr. McWillie. I met him about 7 or 8 months ago. He came by
the place where I worked and I looked around and there was a
little fellow walking in the pit, we call it the pit. He walked up to
me and he says, are you McWillie? I said yes, I am. And he said,
well, Fm Earl Ruby. Well, I like to fell out when he told me he was
Earl Ruby, but I had never seen him before in my life and that was
the last person in the world I wanted to see. I said — he said, I am
239
here, Tm making a documentary for one of the networks — NBC or
one of them — and how have you been and this and that. I finally
told him, I said, Earl, if you don’t mind, would you just get out of
here and let me alone.
I have had enough problems knowing your brother, and I don’t
want any more problems.
Mr. Fithian. And is that the only time you met Earl Ruby then?
Mr. McWillie. That’s the only time I ever met him, yes.
Mr. Fithian. Did Jack ever mention his brother, Earl, to you to
1959?
Mr. McWillie. Did he ever mention him to me?
Mr. Fithian. Yes.
Mr. McWilue. The best I remember it, he had a brother named
Sam, I believe. I’m not positive. But, I am sure he had two broth-
ers. He was a little skinny fellow and was ill in some way. He had
a sister and he told me that she was ill. He never explained it, I
don’t know what illness she had or they both had.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no further ques-
tions.
Mr. Preyer. Are there any further questions from the panel? If
not, Mr. McWillie, under the rules of the committee, when the
questioning of a witness is completed, the witness has the right to
take 5 minutes to explain anything about his testimony that he
wishes to explain or to clarify or to just tell the committee any-
thing he wants to. Is there anything further that you would like to
say to the committee? If so, you will be recognized at this time.
Mr. McWilue. Here is a question on page 121. ‘'Subsequent to
you return to the United States, were you ever approached by
individuals regarding assassinating Castro?” And it took me by
surprise and I said. Oh, my God, no, because I never was there.
This was the last question that was asked me as I was getting
ready to leave the room, if Mr. Purdy will recall, as I was putting
my coat on, I got up and was going out to leave, I am sure that he
asked me this question and it was so absurd that I — it astounded
me because I wouldn’t assassinate a flea.
Mr. Preyer. Do you wish to make any further comment on your
answer to that question?
Mr. McWilue. What, sir?
Mr. Preyer. Do you wish to say an 5 i;hing further about that
question at this time?
Mr. McWilue. Sir, I can’t hear you. I’m sorry.
Mr. Preyer. Do you wish to add to your answer at this time
anything further you want to say about that?
Mr. McWiuie. No, sir.
Mr. Preyer. Do you have any other comments that you wish to
make, Mr. McWillie, on anything?
Mr. McWilue. On anything pertaining to this thing?
Mr. Preyer. Yes.
Mr. McWiuie. Not that I know of, sir.
Mr. Preyer. All right. Thank you. If there are no further ques-
tions, Mr. McWillie, you will be excused at this time. Thank you
for being with us.
[Witness excused.]
240
Mr. Preyer, The Chair will recognize Mr, Blakey. You are ex-
cused at this time, Mr. McWillie.
Mr. McWilue. Congressman, am I free to go back home?
Mr, Preyer. You are free to go, Mr. McWillie. Thank you.
Mr. McWillie. Vm sorry I could not hear you any better than I
did.
NARRATION BY G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF COUNSEL AND
STAFF DIRECTOR
Mr. Blakey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Obviously there is not much to be learned from Mr. McWillie's
testimony, but we do know certain things. First, McWillie was an
associate of Jack Ruby. Second, McWillie may have been associated
with Santos Trafficante, that is, at least if Trafficante had an
entrance in gambling casinos in Havana, though the extent and
nature of that relationship is as yet unclear and, third, there may
be a possibility, just a possibility of an association or at least one
meeting between Jack Ruby and Santos Trafficante himself. So
who is Santos Trafficante? What is his background? \^o are or
were his associates? This was obviously some thing that the com-
mittee could not avoid getting into and, of course, it did, as these
hearings are designed to illustrate.
But before deciding whether or not to hear from Mr. Trafficante
himself, it may be useful to hear the testimony of two other men
who may have been associated with Santos Trafficante. The first
must be summarized for the record, since he was an American
intelligence agent assigned to operations in Florida in the early
1960’s and he cannot publicly appear, otherwise his identity would
be revealed. On September 25, 1978, a sworn statement was given
to the committee by a retired official of the CIA.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that it be entered into the record at
this point as JFK exhibit F-600.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, it is ordered into the record at
this point as JFK exhibit F-600.
[JFK exhibit F-600 was received into the record and follows:]
241
JFK Exhibit F-600
KENNEDY
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS
Name
Address
Interview:
McDonald: The date is September 25 and I*m present in a
room at the Central Intelligence Agency at
Langley, Virginia. Present in the room with me
is a former official of the CIA and Committee
staff member Patricia Orr. The former official
of the CIA has just been administered an oath for
t*he irtf orraation that he is about to relate to the
Committee. The following will be a sworn state-
ment by this former CIA official. We are not us-
ing the course of this sworn statement because
of the sensitivity of the subject matter and a-
gency policy that his name not be revealed at
this time.
Sir, what is your present occupation? '
*’X": I'm a retired government employee. I am doing
some part-time real estate work and I*m also
a security consultant for a private firm.
McDonald: Have you ever been employed by the FBI?
Interviewer Signature
Typed Signature Jai^ McDonald ^
Date transcribed 9-26-78
Date 9-25-78 Time
Place
By= — Form
CIA Interview
Page 2 .
*'X":
McDonald:
:
McDonald:
"X”:
McDonald :
"X":
McDonald:
"X” :
McDonald;
”X”;
McDonald;
"X" :
Yes .
In what capacity and during what years?
I was a Special Agent, employed during the period
of 1947 to 1951.
Have you been employed by the CIA?
Yes .
During what years?
1951 through 1973.
And you retired from the CIA in 1973?
Yes .
What was the nature of your duties while employed
at the CIA and if you would, please explain to
the Committee by starting with the position you
held and if you v/ould give us your title and the
years of service in that position and briefly de-
scribe what your duties entailed?
Well, that’s going to be rather difficult for
me to do it unless I have something that I can
refer to.
All right.
I was originally employed by the CIA as an in-
vestigator. I subsequently held various positions
in the Office of Security, starting with the posi-
tion as Desk Chief of Operational Support, even-
tually I became, that became a branch and I became
243
CIA Interview
Page 3 .
McDonald :
«X»;
McDonald:
”X”:
McDonald;
••X”:
McDonald;
„X» .
McDonald:
‘•X”:
the Branch Chief. I served as an Assistant
Special Agent in Charge of one of the field of-
fices, domestic field offices, and then became
Chief of the Operational Support Division at
headquarters. In 1962 I was transferred to the
Far East, where I became the Chief Regional Se-
curity Officer for the entire Far East, and upon
returning to headquarters I assumed the title of
Deputy Director for Physical, Technical and
Overseas Security. I had retired in June of
1973.
Directing your attention to the years 1960 through
*62, you were Chief of the Operational Support
Division, Office of Security at that time?
Yes.
Where were you stationed during those years?
At headquarters.
And who was your superior during those years?
My superior was ’’Y.”
And what was his position?
He was the Deputy Director for Investigations
and Operational Support.
During that time, did you report to or work for
Colonel Sheffield Edwards?
Colonel Edwards was the Director of Security and
244
CIA Interview
Page 4,
McDonald :
«X» .
McDonald :
”X":
McDonald:
”X” :
McDonald:
"X”;
McDonald:
"X":
McDonald:
”X’':
through— let me put it this way — ^my ordinary
chain oi command \{as through "Y."
And did he report to Colonel Edwards?
Yes.
Directing your attention to 1960, did there come
a time when you in your official capacity at the
CXA became involved in an operation to assassinate
Premier Fidel Castro?
Yes .
Did this operation involve the cooperation and
participation of individuals not connected with
the CIA?
Yes.
Who were these individuals?
Well, Robert Maheu, who was a private investigator,
was approached by the Agency to recruit somebody
to handle the assignment. He in turn talked
with one John Roselli, who he knew to be a person
who had connections with people that probably
could handle such an assignment.
Did you personally know Robert Maheu?
Yes, I knew him.
How did you know him?
He was originally recruited in 1954 by the Office
of Security to perform certain operational support
245
CIA Interview
Page 5 .
McDonald :
"X":
McDonald :
"X” :
McDonald :
»'X":
McDonald:
"X":
McDonald :
”X":
McDonald:
"X":
McDonald:
activities.
And what official at the Agency brought Maheu
and Roselli into the project?
Colonel Sheffield Edwards.
Were there any other CIA personnel at the time
involved in this operation?
Richard Bissel.
And what was his position?
At that time, he was Deputy Director of Plans.
And who else?
And there was a Colonel J. C. King, who was Chief
of the Western Hemisphere Division, who I under-
stood was involved.
Okay. When Edwards first advised you of this
project, how did he put it to you? How did he
explain what the Agency was about to get itself
into?
Well, he suggested that he felt that it was in
the national interest, at least he was advised by
some higher official, that it was in the national
interest that Mr. Castro be liquidated.
And when you say "liquidated," what do you mean?
Well, I assume that was to be put cut of the picture
Which means killing him, assassinating him?
CIA Interview
Page 6.
"X" :
McDonald :
”X" :
McDonald :
«x».
McDonald :
«X».
McDonald :
"X":
McDonald;
"X" :
McDonald:
I, I gathered that.
Okay. And did Colonel Edwards speak to you re-
garding Maheu bringing in individuals with con-
tacts in the gambling world?
No, he didn't specify the gambling world. He
just knew that Mr. Maheu was actively engaged in
some businesses in Las Vegas and assumed that
he knew people who might be of the type that
could handle this assignment.
Okay. Who did Maheu bring into this project,
what individuals?
Only one, at that time. It was a John Roselli.
Did you kncn^ who John Roselli was at that time?
Mr. Maheu identified him as a individual who had
the ice concessions in Las Vegas and who was
a rather knowledgeable person in the groups that
were in gambling interests, international I sup-
pose.
Did you personally meet with Roselli?
Yes, I met Roselli through Mr. Maheu.
Where did you meet him the first time?
As best I can recall, it was at the Plaza Hotel
in New York City in about September of 1960.
Were any specifics discussed as to how the plan
was to be carried out?
CIA Interview
Page 7.
"X" :
McDonald ;
"X”;
McDonald:
”X";
McDonald:
»'X”:
McDonald :
"X" :
McDonald:
Yes .
And what was said?
Well, Mr. Maheu indicated to Roselli that he
represented an international group of clients
who had heavy vested interests in Cuba and they
were quite upset about the confiscation of their
interests by Castro and they were very much in-
terested in doing something that they felt would
be of interest to the United States as well as
themselves in terms of liquidating Mr. Castro.
And who was present during this conversation,
you* re talking about the one in the Plaza Hotel
in New York?
Maheu, Roselli and myself.
All right. Did there come a time when other in-
dividuals were brought into this project?
At this point in time — no.
When in fact did other individuals become involved
in the operation?
Well, uh — after Mr. Roselli rather reluctantly
agreed to participate in this type of operation,
he brought in. other individuals who I knew only
by pseudonym — Sam Gold and a ”Joe,” one "Joe."
When these individuals were identified using those
names, had you met them personally?
CIA Interview
Page 8.
**X” ;
McDonald ;
”X" :
No.
When did you first learn their true identities,
the identities of "Sam Gold” and "Joe”?
It was, and this I have to just play by ear,
because the time frame was a little vague, but
it probably was several months after the operation
got underway, and I was staying at one hotel in
Miami Beach and Mr. Maheu was staying in another
hotel. And one Sunday morning he called me and
asked if I had read the paper. Now, I think there
were two newspapers in Miami at the time — I can * t
tell you which one it was. But in any event, he
said there was something of interest and if I
hadn’t gotten the paper would I go down and pur-
chase one and come back and call him, which I
did. And in the Sunday Supplemental , which as I
recall was something like the Parade that we have
in the local paper here, there was an article iden-
tifying the leaders of the Mafia, and in that
article there were pictures of Sam Gold, who was
identified as Momo Giancana and Joe who was
identified as Santo Trafficante. And Mr. Maheu
claimed that this was the first time that he was
aware who we were actually dealing with.
249
CIA Interview
Page 9.
McDonald:
"X" :
McDonald ;
"X”:
McDonald:
(I
And in what year was this? What year are we
referring to?
Uh, this — it*s very difficult for me to say
whether it spilled into 1961 or whether it was
1960. But I have a faint recollection and I*m
not sure of this that it was, the article was some-
thing about Bobby Kennedy's ten most wanted
individuals. And now on that point I can't
say for sure whether he would have been the At-
torney General or, it seems to me before he
became the Attorney General he had some dealings
with a committee on looking into organized crime -
NOW the time I'm very vague onr-I don't really
know.
When did this operation begin? In other words,
when did you first meet with Roselli?
Well, that would have been September of 1960.
Okay. And how much after that meeting with Roselli
in New York did you learn the true identities of
Sam Gold and Joe?
Well, that's the thing that I can't pin-point.
I'm sorry, I just don't know. It could have been
two months after the operation or it could have
been several months. And I've thought about it
but I just can't pin-point it.
250
CIA Interview
Page 10 .
McDonald:
"X":
McDonald:
M
X":
McDonald ;
'•X";
McDonald:
"X":
McDonald:
Is it possible that it could have been as much
as six months later?
It could have beeh. I don't know.
All right. What did you do upon learning that
the individuals involved in this operation were
in fact organized crime leaders?
I contacted Colonel Edwards and told him what we
had discovered or at least as far as I was con-
cerned it was the first indication I had who we
were dealing with, and apprised him of the iden-
tities .
And what did he say to you? What instructions did
he give you, if any?
Well, he just said, well, this is probably what
we could have expected, I suppose. And I don't
want to be quoting because I don't recall really
what he said but he apparently did not feel that
we should alter our approach to the assignment.
Did he give any further instructions? Did he
give you any additional instructions upon learning
of the individuals' identity who were involved
in this operation?
No. As I recall, we just proceeded.
Now, Mr, — Sir, we've been speaking of the effort
251
CIA Interview
Page 11.
II
X" :
McDonald:
"X" :
McDonald;
•*X” :
McDonald ;
’■X":
to assassinate Premier Castro. Did this project
involve two phases?
If you call it two phases — there was a uh — after
the Bay of Pigs, I think the decision was to forget
about the whole thing, and there was a lull.
And then it was reactivated later on when they
decided to turn Mr. Roselli over to another indi-
vidual.
Were you involved in what we can term Phase II ,
after the Bay of Pigs?
Very generally, as I recall it, and again I*m
calling upon my memory here. And I*m not sure —
I remember we — meeting one of the members of the
Cuban Junta, an individual by the name of "D."
Now whether that was before the Bay of Pigs or
after the Bay of Pigs, I*m at a total loss to
tell you. That I think was part of the second
phase .
Directing your attention then to what we will call
Phase I, you were most actively involved in that
phase . Is that correct?
Yes , yes .
What was your role?
Basically I was sort of, if you want to call it
252
CIA Interview
page 12.
McDonald:
"X" :
McDonald;
"X”:
McDonald:
for lack of anything else, a babysitter for
Johnny Roselli, because at that time Mr. Maheu
was actively engaged in an almost fulltime activity
with the Howard Hughes organization, and it was
taking more and more of his time. And because
of the lull between any activity on the project
he was not able to spend any excessive time in
Miami. Most of his time had to be spent out on
the West Coast or in Vegas. So, I was enlisted
by Colonel Edwards to stay with Roselli when he
was — while there were lulls in between, while
he was in Miami. Just a babysitter so to speak.
Could you also describe your role as that of
being a liaison between the agency, the CIA and
the individuals involved in the operation?
Only with Roselli.
In your capacity as liaison, would all reports
or information given to the CIA come through
you?
Yes.
Would you please tell us what method of assassina-
tion was decided upon during the phase of the
project. Phase I as we*ve described, when you
were actively involved?
253
CIA Interview
Page 13.
*’X" ;
McDonald :
;
McDonald :
"X”:
McDonald:
”X”:
Well, I think several things were considered.
But it ended up with a thought perhaps, the
best method would be the use of some sort of
a lethal pill.
And how was this assassination going to be
carried out?
Well, the plan was that the courier was to —
well, first of all, I think, in backing up,
they were to recruit somebody who would be in
a position to administer the pill to the princi-
pal. And initially they were thinking in terms
of a cook or somebody who had access to Castro's
meals. And I guess the plan was to have him
place the pills in his food.
All right. Did you ever meet Santo Trafficante
during the period of this operation?
Uh, I am told I did.
Would you please elaborate?
Yes. One time, one afternoon Roselli and I were
just wiling away the time. We were staying at a
motel in Miami Beach and he suggested we go down-
town to — not downtown Miami Beach — to just look
around at the sights. And v/e went down to a shop
ping mall and he suggested that we stop by a habe
35-379 0 - 79 - 17
254
CIA Interview
Page 14,
dashery store and for some reason or other
he took a dislike to my shirt that I was wearing
and he suggested that he'd buy me a real fancy
shirt which I wasn't particularly keen on — his
choice of it — but to humor him I went along.
We went in and he bought a very fancy silk shirt
for me. And while we were in there it became
obvious that he knew quite a few of the employees
and it ended up by our going to the back of the
store where, instead of it being a stockroom as
I envisioned it would be — it was rather a rather
lavish lay-out which looked like a club of some
sort. And there were several individuals there
and he introduced me to those people. They were
just a sea of faces as far as I was concerned.
The names were thrown out, first names which I
didn't get or meant nothing to me. And then
after we left the store, when we were walking
away, he said remember the fellow that was sitting
at such-and-such a location in the back room,
he says that's "Joe," he's our courier. I wasn’t
really focusing on this individual because they
were just a lot of faces as far as I was concerned.
But there I guess I did meet Trafficante, because
I found out later that he was "Joe," and that's
255
CIA Interview
Page 15.
McDonald;
"X" :
McDonald :
"X" ;
McDonald ;
” X" ;
It
X" :
McDonald ;
"X" :
my extent of my ever meeting "Joe.”
When you met him in the store, was this prior
to your reading the article in the Sunday Supple - '
ment ?
Yes .
What was Traf f icante * s role in the operation?
Well, as I understood it, he was a courier that
was running back and forth from Miami to Havana
and he was representing the casino interests in
Cuba.
And what do you mean by "courier"?
Well, he apparently — they, Castro had closed down
the casinos and they were — I guess the people that
owned them were back here in the States and he
was running back and forth trying to determine
what their status was and whether they were going
to be reopened and whether they were going to be
taken over by the Government?
But he did have accesss to several people in the
Cuban Government, at least that was the understand-
ing I got.
And was it to be his role to transmit the poison
pill to Cuba?
Yes.
256
CIA Interview
Page 16.
McDonald: Sir, in 1967 the Inspector General's Office of
the CIA prepared a report dealing with the CIA/
Mafia plots to assassinate Castro. In this re-
port, the Agency states that Trafficante was
the person who contacted and procured "Q,” a
Cuban official and "K’’, a Cuban exile leader as
two persons who could serve as potential assas-
sins or accomplices to the assassination plot.
Is this consistent with your conception of
Trafficante ' s role?
”X"; I recall both of these individuals and I met
one. I met “K" but it was my understanding
that they were possible — they were people that
could probably take care of the assignment, but
I don't know whether that was Traf ficante *s recom-
mendation or it was a recommendation made by
Sam. That was not clear to me at all.
McDonald: All right.
Well, if the Inspector General's Report — and as
I say, I'm quoting from it or reading, paraphras-
ing from it — you would have been the person in
a position to transmit information to the Agency
at that time, such information that is now con-
tained in that report. Is that not correct?
CIA Interview
Page 17.
257
"X" :
McDonald :
"X" :
McDonald :
”X":
McDonald:
I was the only conduit actually from Roselli
through Maheu to the Agency.
Okay, so if the report — the '67 Inspector Gen-
eral's Report states that it was Trafficante
who was the person who was supposed to contact "Q" and
"K" then, would that fact be true?
If I understand the way it was running that
would be true because Trafficante was the indi-
vidual who was in touch with the Cubans in Havana.
Sir, the * 67 Inspector General ' s Report also
states that Trafficante, after receiving the
poison pills to be used in the assassination ,
passed these on the Cuban contacts in an attempt
to kill Castro. Is this also consistent with
your conception of Traf f icante * s role in the
assassination plots?
Yes .
Thank you very much .
Mr. Blakey. With your permission, I would like to summarize it.
Mr, Preyer, Mr. Blakey is recognized.
Mr. Blakey. The former official stated that in September 1960,
when he was Chief of Operational Support Division, Office of Secu-
rity, he was approached by his superior. Colonel Sheffield Edwards
and was told of an operation to assassinate Cuban Premier Fidel
Castro. He was told by Edwards that Robert Maheu, then a private
investigator, had been approached by the CIA to assist in the
operation. Maheu, in turn, recruited one John Roselli. Subsequent-
ly, Roselli brought two other individuals into the operation. These
individuals were known to the officials as Sam Gold and Joe.
According to this official, he subsequently learned the true iden-
tities of these men. Sam Gold was alleged Mafia leader Sam Gian-
cana and Joe was another alleged Mafia chief man, Santos Traffi-
cante. The official stated that he was the CIA liaison with these
two men. It was to be Trafficante’s role to serve as a courier.
Trafficante was to arrange to get poisoned pills into Cuba which
were to be put in Castro’s food. Trafficante’s participation also
included the procuring of a Cuban Government official and a
Cuban exiled leader as two persons who could serve as the actual
assassins. The official stated that Trafficante did, in fact, pass the
poison pills on to his Cuban contacts in an effort to carry out the
plot.
258
This official also stated that when he learned the true identities
of Giancana and Trafficante, he reported this fact to Colonel Ed-
wards who, nevertheless, allowed the project to proceed.
Mr. Chairman, the evidence you have just heard, in particular
that part that identifies Santos Trafficante, is corroborated in a
1967 report of the Inspector General of the CIA. Part of that
report, which the committee has secured for public distribution,
indicates:
The man Maheu [deletion] knew as Sam Gold appeared as Salvatore (Sam) Gian-
cana, a Chicago-based gangster. Joe Pecora, who was never identified either to
Maheu or [deletion] in any other way, turned out to be Trafficante, the Cosa Nova
chief man in Cuba.
As to Santos Trafficante's role, as well as that of the late Gian-
cana, it is described in a section designated as ''Comment."' It
reads:
Giancana was flatly opposed to the use of firearms. He said that no one could be
recruited to do the job because the chance of survival and escape would be negligi-
ble. Giancana stated a preference for a lethal pill that could be put in Castro’s food
or drink. Trafficante, Joe Pecora, was in touch with a disaffected Cuban official with
access to Castro and presumably of a sort that would enable him to surreptitiously
poison Castro.
Mr. Chairman, the evidence we have just heard indicates that
Santos Trafficante apparently participated in plots to assassinate
Fidel Castro. He was, in short, willing to kill the head of state.
In this connection, it may be well to note one possible reason for
Santos Trafficante's participation in these plots. The reason was
offered to the committee by the Cuban Government. In its trip to
Havana, the Cuban Government made available to the committee a
report dealing on Mafia activities in Cuba. Mr. Chairman, I would
ask that that report be entered into the record as JFK exhibit
F-653 and the translation as JFK exhibit F-654.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, they will be entered into the
record at this point.
[JFK exhibit F-653 was entered in the record and with a nota-
tion follows:
[Pages 11“18 of JFK exhibit F-653 were photostatic copies of
documents originally generated in response to requests to the
Cuban Government from the Warren Commission in 1964. Due to
their extremely poor reproductive quality, legible copies could not
be reproduced here. Page 19, a copy of Jack Ruby's tourist card, is
reproduced elsewhere in these hearings as JFK exhibit F-583 and
F-584.
Tage 11 is a copy of Oswald's Cuban visa application, and is
reproduced elsewhere in these hearings as JFK exhibit F-408.
[Page 12 is a copy of a letter from Juan Nilo Otero and can be
found in the Warren Commission Report as C.E. 2564.
[Page 13 is a copy of a certificate signed by the then Secretary of
State, Dean Rusk.
[Page 14 is a letter to the Secretary of State from the Warren
Commission requesting information regarding Lee Harvey Oswald's
trip to Mexico in September and early October 1963. It also re-
quests cooperation by the Cuban Government in furnishing copies
of documents relating to Lee Harvey Oswald's visit.
[Pages 15-18 are letters from the Swiss Embassy in response to
State Department correspondence regarding Oswald.]
259
JFK Exhibit F-653
TOS QUE CO pr^A EL C U SSTIONAPYO EN T R^^J}0
^ PGP f r. _CJ2A;/ IJ to S OBI^E as ES.I cm T o s DB l a CA IkA
rad:' DOPR£D:D:':fTANTSS DD ES tad OS ‘JN::DCS.
I N D I CE
PA G! MA '
I, - Supuesta visilta de Oswald a la
Ernhajeida da la UniCzi SoviSti-
ca en Civ.clad MayJcCr 1
II. - Mafia £
III. - Crgayiizaciones y activldades-’
anti'^cubanas . 3
IVr - Supuesto contacto da Osv/ald-
con estudlantes cubanos en -
Minsk, ' 7
V, - Actlvidades de E. Howard
Hunt en Meylco. 7
I
VI, ~ Secuestros da avfonus 7
VII, - Agendas de Inteligencia
8
An ex os
10
260
A SPECTOS QU E CONTEMPLA EL CUESTIONAI?IO ENT PEGADO
POE EL CQMIT E SELE CTO SOB EE AS ESI N AT OS DE LA CAMA
PA DE EEPPE SENTAPT E S DB ESTADOS U NIP OS .
Ea ests informe aparecen varies de los aspoctos contcmplados en
el cuestionario entregado por ese Coniit^j contestados en forma ~
de temas ,
J. - SUPUBSTA VIS IT A DE OSV/ALD A LA EMBAJADA DE LA
UNION SOVIET iC A EN CIUDAD MEXICO . -
En relaci<^n a este temaj considerarr.os qve el Comit6 debc~
dirigirse al Gobi er no Sovietico^
En cua22to a lo que nos compete, podemos senalar que el ~
pz-opio dia 27 de setiembre, al solicitar Os\vald la visa de -
transito para continuar viaje a la Unidn SovUtica, el Cons^
lado CLbano en Merico se puso en contacto telefonico con la
Embajada de la Union Sovictica, la qua respondi6 que ellos
para otorgar visas de entrada a su peJs, tenlan que esperar
la autorizacldn dal MINEEX en MoscO, lo cual tardarla al-
redador do cuatro mases.
II. - MAELA . -
La 2nformaci6n que se posee relacionada al pa pel de la Ma-
fia noro^americana en los planes da atentado contra los Iz -
dcres da la Pevolucion Cub ana y otras actividadas conlrarre
voliicionarias , eslL dada, en las revelacionas que al respcc
to ofrecib el Comite del Senado en su informe sobre los
Compl ^ts de Ases:n~dos comra dirigentes de otros pafses.
261
Hoja No, 2
La Mafia inici6 sus actividades en Cuba durante los aiios SO, ~
aprovechando la corrupcidn existente entre los gobernantes de
turno.
Durante los anos 40 extendid sus mecanismos de control^ aun
quo de forma encubierta, a los Sindicatos de trabajadores do
distintos sectores , lo que le permitirfa en un futuro manejar-
de cierta forma to do lo que se relacionara con sus intereses,
Dstos se ven fortalecidos con el golpe del 10 do marzo^ me-
mento en que la Mafia comienza a asentar sus capitales en
gocios de bienes rafces, construcciones de hoteles de lujo, -
casinos y centr.os de a.tracci6n turlstica, para asf fomentar ~
el turismo para su explctacidn.
Con referenda a la administraci6n y operacidn de negocios -
de la Mafia durante el ano 195^, la misma pose fa el control de
los Casinos de juego, gue radicaban en los hoteles de lujo y -
V
cabarets.
La drecci6n de la Mafia, la representaba Santos Trafficante,
quien era el delegado del Juego, mientras que los a dm inis fra-
dores de estos Casinos eran en su mayorfa cubanos o figuras-
extranjeras vinculadas a la Mafia,
Las salas de juego las dirigfan los jefes asignados por la Aia-
fia, que velaban por la organizacidn y el funcionamiento de -
las mesas de juego.
La Mafia obtuvo grandes beneficios por utilidades del juego j -
cit^ndose conto ejemplo que el Casino del Hotel iSViera, en -
un ano, obtuvo una ganancia neta de un mill6n cuatrocientos -
mil d61ares.
Los negocios de la Mafia no s61o correspondfan al juego sino
adem&s amparahan el control del trafico de uarc6ticos, joy as,
divisas, trata de biancas y las exhibiciones de pelfculas por.-
Dograficas.
Al trinafo de la Revolucidn en 1959 se derran todas las salaa
262
Hoja No. 3
de Jaeffo, siendo reabiertas luego posterlorniente por conside
rar el Cobierno /?ovo7ucionario, que a pesar de que el juego -
de azar constltuTa una verdadera lacra social, el cierre repen
tiro do estos Casinos y Cabarets significaba el desplazamicn-
to de dent os de trabajadores, Se dispone entonces la regiil^
ci^d del funcionamiento de las sa.las de juego a trav6s de un -
Dec ret o emitido el 4 de marzo de 1959, en que se auioriza -
por rnediaddo del INAV finstituto Nacional de Ahorro y Vi -
vlendos) la apertura de tales centros,
El Decreto entre otros requisites establecTa que :
“ Los Casinos serf an operados exclusivamente por personas
do probada solvop.cia moral y los extranjercs requerlan, ~
la previa aprobacion por escrito da la Embajada-'
corraspondiente^
El 55 de setiembre de l96l son cerrados de manara deli -
nitiva las salas da Juego que adn permaneefan abiertas.
III.- OEGANIZACIONES Y ACTIVIDADES AITTI-CUBANAS . -
La. orga,Dizaci6n contrarrevolucionaria que desde un inicio se
destac^ por propagar las supuestas actividades da Oswald en
favor de Cuba fue el DEE (Directorio Eevolucionario Estu -
diantil), la cual publicd una ediciCn especial de su drgano de
prensa denominado '^TEJNCHEEA^^ al dia siguiente del asesi^
nato do Kennedy.
En el mis mo se divulgaba ampliamente todo lo relacionado -
coa Oswald, indicando una vinculacidn de Cuba cou los be -
chos. Muchos de los elementos sostenidos en esa publica -
ci6n , entran en contradiccion con lo pleLZiteado en las invest i_
gacl ones posteriores, sob re todo en las ubicaciones de luga-
ros - raebas en quo siipiiestamente estuvo Oswald, lo que es-
tabKsco la falsedad do alganas informaciones difundidaz.
263
Hoja A^o. if.
Cupc:'o dlas despu6s del asesinato^ un nerteamoricano partida
z'lo de los conti'arrovolijcionarios cubanos declavaba en su pro
de la radioe minora de Miami WQAPI habar entrevistado
a. varies de es<^os claL'i a.a'cos^ uno da los caa.lcs Is hahfa manl -
I:cv‘:sido que tea Fa la inforn\aci6n de que Osi/ald Lab fa essado en
Ci ontz’e setlombrc y ectahre de 1963 (iecha en que Oszvald-’
se encoDtraba en Mexico hacienda gestionas para viajar a Cu-
b-L
Tanihi6n se observan las supuestas f*revclacionas'^ de Frank -
Sturgis y otros contrarrevolucionarios cubanos acusando a Cu^
ba de la muerte de Kennedy, las ciiaies ban sido difundldas ani_
pliamente par diversos rotativos de la prensa norteamericana.
La organizacion contrarrevolucionaria La Cruz iue una de-
las iantas ausplciadas por la C, I»A, coma fachada pava la eje^
cucUd de los planes contra Cuba,
Una de sus ac clones consisti6 en la infiltracidn por la zona de
Punta Hicacos, Matanzas a mediados de i960, de los apatri -
das Mario Tauler Sague y Armando Cubrfa Pamos, qiiiones ba
biendo recibido entrenamiento de la C»J.A. cumpUrlan la mi -
sion de atentar contra la vida del Com andante en Jefe y real! -
zai' distint as actividades de sabotaje.
Para ejecutarlo le fueron entregados detonadores, exniosjVos,
ametralladoras , pistoias, asf como.proclamas de la organiza-
ci6n contrarrevolucionaria La Cruz
Ofra de las organizaoiones contrarrevolucionarias. Resist en-
cia Civica Anticomunista (RCA), era la ag-riipacf6n de las de -
Dominadas : Ej^rcito de Liheraci6n Nacional (E, L, N»), Movi -
miento de Racuperaci6n Revolucionaria (M, R. R, ), Agrupaci6n
Mcntecristo y otras ; siendo dirigida desde el exterior por el-
coni-rarrevolucionario y agente C.I.A. Nino Dfaz.
Uno de los com plots fraguado por la RCA fue e l que debfa
264
Hoja No, 5
tcnc}£' lu^oLV el 7 da ahril de 1%3 en cl Stadium Latinoamericano,
douda particlparfan l6 hombras armadoa da pistdas y grainadas
d a f. r<?. gri{ e n i’a c iYi n ,
Dar.rro dal grupo sc cncontraban Enrique Rodrfsuez Valdas, Ri
cardo L6paz Cabrera, Onorio Torres Pardomo y Jorga Carlos
Espinosa Escarles , ouienes vestirdau con uniiormes do of/cia -
Es dal Ejcrcito Pabclde y cuyo propbsiio era asesinar al Co -
m ando.nte en Jefe^
Unos meses dcspucs se eiatora otro plan, esta vcz contra ia vi
da dal X-Iinistro da las Puersas Ajrniadas Pcvolucionarias, RaCil
Castro P.uz, con n\<:nvo de la celebraci6n del 26 da Julio^ El ~
prTacipal coordinador da esta acci6n lo era Ibrahim Machin Her
nandao giden cump- Xa instrucciones del agenta C^I,A, Nino
Diaz,
Algv.nas de las personas emplcadas por la C^I,A, en las accio
13 cs de atentados y planes contr'a Cuba fueron :
Nino^ D iaz :
Ex->Capit6n del Ejarcito Rebelde, Particip6 en la conspira -
cion E^aguada por cl traidor Huber Matos,
Mantuvo comactos en la Base Naval do Cuantanamo donde en
trenb mercenarios y desde donde orientd la realizaci^n de -
disclitos planes contra Cuba,
En Miami al servicio de la C, I. A, ‘ se ha Wncuiado a trav^s-
dcl Td^vim lento de ^cuperaci6n Pevolucionaria a elementos
coal a Artlme, Tony Varona, Diaz Lanz y Mir6 Cardona,
Snir. u ^ I Carba llc Mor eno :
I :io dcianido en m,arzo de 1963 cuando 2a operacj<5a co/i^ra la
o. '-. riinacion co:,:ratrrevoIucionaria Pesistencia CTvlca Anti-
265
Hoja iVo. 6
c <3nc<^ntrAndo£:c!le docunu:! nt^^cloa HeJsa. a nombre -
o'j Serafin ELCf::'.s Subi^n, Peri^/iccid a /a idnrlua da Cue-
• ■ - antes da 1
S ^ dolfo P.l ve ro Cs r o ;
.'‘i -’;a 27 te de la C. J, A. infiltrado en el terriiorio nacionpj jun-~
lj con un grnpo, Tra/a documenrncl:in falsa a nonihre de -
Carlos Rani fra 2 Valdes,
Agente v.rilisaba el seiiddnin:c de Braad r-ara sus acti-
■^Idades con Is C.J,A;
^4c’. f o Msnd osa :
Agent e de la C. J. A. qua u tills aba ol seudonimo de Pa d I pa-
rn sus actividades enen\igas, Sa JcfiJti'O en el taz'riCori o -
racioDai Junto con el iambian Rlvoro Caro, antes nte.v.a2ona-
do.
J c V g e Gave fa jRi ibio :
Agente de la C. J, A. cen el seud6nImo de Tony, Se 2nfSltr6
ccrno radista da un Team de Infiltracidn de la
Este grupo (RlverO Caro, Mendoza y Garcia Rubio) traTa la
taraa de reorgEinizar las organizaciones contrarrevoluciona
rlas despues del fracaso de Gir6n y realizar un atentado ai
G'enerai de EJercito Ra6I Castro combinado con una autoa-
gz os idn a la Base Naval Norteamericana de la Bahia de
C'nantananxo,
Pierre Owen Diaz de Ur e :
El r- ombre corz^ecto es Piorre Oueng Diez de Ure; Agent e -
266
Hoja Wo. 7
de la C. J. yl. , uno ds los prSncipales involucrados ea Ja org^^
nizac 26 n del plan de atontado al Com andante en Jefe, prepare
crJ para el 28 da ^etlembz^c de 1963 Anlversario de los Cojjii-
tas de Defense, de la I^evoIuc 26 n IHste plan concis
en dlnamitar las conduccoras del alcantarlllado qua pa^sa-
La par debajo da la tribuna,
Pierre Quango ciudadano francos, -fue reclutado por Ja -
C, I, A, en 1961, actuando co /no informante del Agent e Fran^
cisco Blanco de los Cuetos,
IV, - SUPUESTO CONTACTO DE OSWALD CON ESTUDIANTES -
CUEANOS EN MINSK . -
Haa:a el nxomento no se ha ubicado ningHn ciudadano cubano de
ics cue cursaron estudlos en Minsk que bajra tenido contacto -
CO.'’ Z.ee H, Oswald, en esa ciudad,
Consideramos que esta Informacidn, al igual que otras refJeJa
dns por Priscilla Johnson Me, Millan, e-3 sv. Ubro La Form^
ci:3.r? de un asesinaio son fa 7 s as. r’espeaeZ/endo las mismas a
vn interns sensacionalista en medio de la campana desatada -
para vincular a Cuba con Oswald,
V, - ACTIVIDADES DE B, HOWARD HUNT BN MEXICO . -
No se posee inform a sobre las activi dados desarrolladas-
per Howard Hunt durante el ano 1963,
VI. - SECUESTROS DE AVI ONES . -
El Lz-o, de mayo de l96l, Antulio i^am/re^; Ortiz, ciudadano -
nor c me ricano do or i gen porter riqiieno fue el primer s 12 J eto-
267
HoJol ATo, 8
que lie go a La Habanfi secuestrendo un avi6n, cumpliendo asf
i^u'itriiccionQS de 7a C, I, A, , ma.nteniendo on Cube una actitud
CO- ?'i i c i i ya y dl versi i o n i s ta ,
Fuq procesado judicial n\ente por salida He gal dal pals y sa/7
ci‘VJado a clos anos de privaci6n da libartad, Fn 1975 abando^
17 j ruestro pals, a partir de las gestiones raalizadas por la -
FiT\bajada Sui 2 a con el MINREX de Cuba ea relaci6n a este -
a] a r:\outo.
FI ,S4 de ju7io de I96l un avl6n Electra da Ja Eastern Alrxinaa
con 33 pasajeros, en ruta Tampa a Miami, fue des-^/iado do su
vatu Aacja Cuba por un viajero que solicito a la prsp.sa no ra~
veJara su idcr.Lidad por temor a las repvssalias qua fomarfan
a:i !os Fstadcs Unldos conlra su faniiiia. Agragd a los pariy
db::cs quo toni<5 esi'a actitud auta las reivarccas nagavivas de~
i'^.r hincionarjos norteainericanos de pernu'.irla raalizar el -
vJaJe,
El 9 de agosto de 1961, Albert Charles Cacfon, s6bdito Iran -
css secuastro un LC-5 c?e la Pan Am^erican en ruta de Hous -
ton a Guatemala, El avi(^n fue devvelto y el secues trader e^-
traditado a Mexico a 50iici;ud del Gobierno do ese pais, sJen-
do condenado a 7 anos de encarceJamiencc par robo con i-do?an
cla y amenazas.
VII, - agenciab de INTELIGBFCZA , -
Desde muebo antes de la derrota de la invasibn de Playa Ci -
r6n e incluso casi coincidentemente con el triunfo de la Revo-
lucidn, el Gobierno de los Estados Unidos comenz6 a actuar -
contra Cuba en primer lugar a travas de sus Agendas de In-
tellgencia, en particular la C, I, A.
Despues de la derrota de Girdn, segGn el informs del Senado
da F -ados Unidos, sc in Ida la llamada Operacion MOXGOO
268
Hoja No, 9
aue de acuordo con dicho informe. conc2uye en noviembre.
do i '6.?, despuSs d-..‘ la Crisis da Octubro y que consistio en -
i 'iJiaaciOn dc e.'-:tUo.dos cuhauos y disidanias en Cuba^^, pa-
ra c.a rz ocar a2 Cabic'rno,
Lo cJe.rfO es gue a6n despu4s del perlodo de vig;encia de la cita
da Op,iraci6n, 2a aciividad contra Cuba de las Agendas de Jnte^
ligencia da Estados Unidos no ccs6,
Para lencr una idea de 2a intensidad de estas actlvidades basta
decir qje entre l96bi y 1963 se produjeron mas de 60 irfiltracig^
rj-3S pZ'V las costas ci banas, con 2os cbjetivos de introducir ar-
mas / a:cploEivcs, reaUsar sabota/a, inlilirar o exfiltrar Agen-
fes, achdsar colabazadores, abascecer Pedes dels C*I,A, , -
etc, da Jas qua n.ds do 50 son posteriores a noviembra do 1963;
y cue p :r otra />-• ;a , ei trabajo de 2os A, g antes infiltrados o rc~
cIatad''S antes y di.-yon'-e ^^MONGOOSE^^ no se concluyo a2 cievre
do dlcha Cperad'^ii, sino concinuo basta ser liquidado por los -
0::ganoz de Segitrl 3- d ciibancs.
Anexo se adj,:ntan di stint os docuni.entos relatives a :
, Visita de Oswald al Cossuiado Cubano en Mexico (plasiille. de -
soli chad de visa y rospuest a del PIINREX),
Corrospondencia cnviada a La Habana por la COTTiisi^n Warren
en iSoi-!-, gue denniestra la cooperacidn del Gobierno de Cuba -
con la iiivestigadon gue esta Comisidn llevaba a cabo,
, Tarjetas de identidad Ileaadas en el aeropuerto de La Habana -
per vn Individuo c/ne dJo el nombre de Jack Ruby, gue visits ~
nuestro pafs en dos oporturidades en 1959,
. Es o\.a rssumen do actividades directas do la C. I.A^ entre las
dG -'S 1963 y 1963 r acompanaAc por una peqiiena mucstra grafi-
ca ,'as mis mas.
81 - - O oiS-SC
V > ^ ^
69S
270
Ciudodonro - >
Fccha y lu^ar dj rto c i m : anfot 0^^ ’ ■' ' '
?a:aportc No.
L c u p :: c i S n ( ixppcsjndc c nprrj^a poro lo qj<. trabcjo ) ^ ^ ' ’ '•"
C5»c- :;c:; cj.ifr:.iior;;i: ,n Cuba
(V;oHv>:, 5 dilaso 5 foncic: 5 antvjrtDrjs--*- __
Fcmiilc-js c poraonas conoctd:.s icsidon^os on Cube _ _ _
■■- aido ir.vjgodo d^sdci Cube? (SI: ) (Mo: )
Coii ouo c.b|.ito? —
271
,• .■.'Cl.'.: v:-;
12
,-iJ 4 6P7
Ln ’^n^rsr.p l?j cU o '?.*s 193.1
lliiZi .j ‘I .™. iiiV^/iac ro ?
^orl^'irar a cn r ^l;u:i'rj con la Rvi'lcir’i*
lie vi yn ’lo ucl cM!^la<lirn ncrc.;n.'r:^/*iCL:io livdi iU«U^!%V
pari ac-U.-lir a C’.i solicit;;:’ -cliO co.i.:'iiic"iTj03 ?r.r cc.'-lc coa
u tri'idn tcnc-a Iri vi’-::' lo la V'; <lo la -J : r>
tton ssiiirni .’/^vivInrlciVirio.T 0.c* t") zWV'T:/’, t.i 3 i
ti^ro .^.c .istvvl^
rratr:vvn’lT.. ‘ii t:c.
Pir I'Cter
a' ronn* A2*‘reJo Mirabal
C-. ?. I'-'t t'e C»i5)d Cl M3 ;uc»>
273
274
A1 .jec vn t nr J.C c ; o p. 1 : . v. n j p : lo i ^ i j ^ ,.. . . ./
ol Ohio/ Jnrtico nir c:?:LClad ii'Cri-'i&.ito ^
dc ;ir: nj '"’C-v-t.:* *nl ■
dal l ^ K-xvvr.-, re li r d^l ' de
tan - on ,>H ";occn:Ldn vLeiv:?*?^ • '
1 i.n * : < : '- . ^ :'. ■:. • ';. :i o uj >yv: ' ■ v ■- v:i, i : r 1 ^ 1 i • .:. r r c • c t u . ‘ ■ c. "' 3 S ' i . • '
Ql OiiD-io ■ :• ,W3C:n, dr.-!.- ;^ivov '
Ca- ,ld, }v:; < -ito :ir:----n' moa ^;vvaoo 1 do .:-:;ecic.eW;a.’
(c'J. : , K •• .!.;;. CA.^^.^ i ./‘ i. xdO i 0 >’ V- in i;' c-’l, d* • O 4 0 C‘ • ^
cl? -A^staco onci»:?uivA a:k-::c Icti) . - \
A1 tra’A i^iiiir c:/rv.. AoldcjiAid rJ. ^^'oMornrj j?; Chib;:*-/
e .1 I>e p:i i* v- ai •' ■ ■• : .' -j o C. e .■ , / * a ^ ; I o rr a r :’. c no I:- it c n o i c : > « 3 4 ima * • v •
Ci 0 lui ,v i: • . *"i i; 1 r, jr 0 1 a; '.vi :• ': 1. a ■: i r\l v. > d c 1 o -d C iiba -'■ v e a 0 ^ •
ncocr plcn-r..:ytc q;!- Ji a o- i-didao or; -- -,ct6n‘'c;:;ro'’
e:-:ta c: tnd o;^ un ;
on £:u on 'cTD, c on ‘j ro
del plono y librc o;j :n:e;» cun ro los yodero;?: nev'erarios’';-
d o 1 ( :-o bl e r no t .; 0 C i < b : ■ . 1 ’ 't jj an"' 1 0 u to - 0 bn L e do do?'' * ;
e>:TirGS;.r I- orii^oniT) .'■ , n.-> cl-rA.r^:±o, : e qvc en vlsi-.r <.-.g;
inlror^G f.-i- -i.-'::!.do o> c l man- o i- iLcvd >.>oi- »-t .-.j^^siuGro .' '
del ucsp.v,f ■. c'ido i'ri-vkic'/ice, ol viciV.rioriic dubi\ nodi.''
0 .CO- 3 aOj' l:’! AC fiulieiv.m
275
276
277
278
279
20
ALGW r -1 7 DE LAS ACC l ONES DIRECT AS D E c/ T, A, CONTRA
CUB A o ' ^ W •
l96l y 19SU fund on Si la Eed dlriddi por I2:im6o Graii Al-
.- ..23, reciufado por la C,J,A,
CrrM AJsina radbid ori‘^i?^^ci‘<5n c/e forrnar unn red stibvjrsiya
y d^ e^piona]o , diKuCola co/no medio do cOTnunicsid6ii, eztr a
circ.n, WC3 cM^cmatica AT’- 3,
E’ji'T'S algun?3 da sus misiones, orjta red propsivd un aten^^>do al
C ' 1 a ie en Jar e, ciUAp Uen do a da ruuc: c : :t,s ta ra as c r ■'•, v o -
b: sqiioda da infornipcid-i da iodo npo y c:: ^opecfaZ fKiZZ'^rs
Ea. C,I,A. raciu^a en Vanoz-iuela d contrarr'evolucicnarlo Cste-
bar. Marquez Novo, encrarAndolo cn E3tv,dzs Uddos y si a da i:>-
traduddo il&^alrr.onte en Cuba on riiarzo da 1362 par la prox'Li -
ci.3 de Pinar del
Mdrquez Novo redbid orientacionos de croar una ampHa red -
CC3 misioDss subvsrsivas y da espicnaja, para apoyar una posj
bla invasiCn a Z pails, En asca sentido la C.I^A, reaiizC r:'.as -
da 30 Operacloces mari'yanas; infUiraJid'^ y e.cziUrando
para eotreoamlerto on el e,xterior e introdiii^xo^zdo grs.tt crrJi -
dad da arrr.as y e.'cplosJvos para cumplir £^us nxisionos,
Paralelaznente a asto, raalizaa acfividad de espionaje, princi-
pal meat e mill tar,
En 1963, sin abandonar la bOsqueda de infocmaci^o mill tar, sc
orisnta por la C, J*A. la biisqueda de informaciiin econonxica, -
enviindose da^os de eci^'ipos soviJcicos y movin.itrto -
de especialistas de pafs.eiZ sodalistas*
Em'a red tenia adertiAs varies Agents s nados en Eixtador -
280
Hoja No, 2
Unicl^^: qua imparl'Ic.n InstruccJoncs an Cuba a ^rupos c/e miem^
broi^ <.?:? 2a rad,
Ofjr .bcn en la zo/>r do PSnar del PTg^ La Habana e .Ts7a cTe PJ
hcjC. lic'.a^.a su Uqiiidaciyin deEiaitiva an l^Sh,
El ciiidadano nortaamericano Larry Lunt, rasidante en Picar-
d.^2 PE't y pr&vianjCi’re rachttado por la C,I,A» en 196l, cono-
C3 air^dador da niaj^o del 621 a Ealix Liiaa Pianco, a qaian re -
eJufa j-^C'SterlormcnKa. La Infcrmacldrr doJicitada a Pina P/^n-
co GntoDcea, iiie c!s lipo mill tar,
Algur. iiampo cfespiir-cT Parry Pu.'ii ie entre^a como raec/io do co
niunlc-.cl.'.n papal c^--rhC'n y lo adias^tra en el us o da 6s te, Pos-
tBitct',..erte Lima Hitnco raciba da 2a C.I,A^ un rac/i^'*rscc'p
I'.’J-l/S-A y otr^'s .nxedios^
E-i el liiyar cococic\- por Carabedas, Las Villas, sa infiltran -
en osii’jra da lS'Si‘ TorAaS Cilhar^'^ Parnand^z Solas, Nilo Pc*r
nivadoj. y pz-herto y r. a rites,
Famdudax Soias, ciilen 3aM6 del pals ilagalmente, lue racluta
do por la C-2. A . pasando un curso inteasivo en el manaja dc
arm a A y explosives ,
Por criertacionos do la C*I.A. se iDfiltrS ea el pafs on esta -
fecha con ol cbjeilv:^ da hacor cOAtacco cou yn cabecilla da ban^
didos . y crear una red do ospionaja*
El 19 da octubre do 1962 se infiiiran por Pinar del Rio, dos -
teams 0,1, A, al f rente de los cuaies raaian los Agentes Mi -
gual Angel Oroxco Crespo y Paynaldo Garda Martinec,
Pf?to=7 N^a/Tts de in/ii,^racion /uoron transportados kasta nues -
tras c^ctas por los; tuques f^Vil rrioff y f'CiUies^f habicodo part[_
do da .AA costas do Estados U.iida.z,
Lr ‘*.r or.fou.vd' aor la C, I, A, a anZ^o/? griipos era renli-^
xar . labotaje on Lis Minas do Matajtambi o efi Santa Luci'*,-
281
Hoja No. 22
PJ.irr.' del PIo, pcira lo cjuc^ irofan gran ci/iriV/ao’ de armas y ex
p I O.S’.
ir.' _■- Jidercacl'y por Oro-jco Crasp,^ cebii: cut'errar Jas ar -
r.:: y cxpJosivz j sn Jugares carcanos a Ja 21 otro iprji
p " 'igido por Garcia Martlnoz, dabia el cable quo-
ti ■^'portaba el Triner&l dssde 2a mina Itasta Santa Lucia, Ic -
' pi^.'^vocarfa dejar If CO obreros airapacl:^'^ chntro do la ml ~
2'f i. aclutamiento de Orozco Crespo por parte de la C,I,A* fue
o/^. : ..'icfo por Mainioi Artlme eo mayo da 195 0^ De su.a daclara
clc. •*; se conoca da sus relaclonas pars oar 2a.r coa *fBob
Jocj del Grupc ch Idls loner, Esoeclalaa y I 22 acciyl dados
C. l^A. on Minr i on csct focha, as7 come 70 A dlstlntcs Cficla -
2: : C,I*A, Cnia bi indaron ir.siruccI5n u 'c-ipitban carg"'S d02\ -
t ' . :.'o la Agonci 2 ,
x7. v:cf(?ail)r3 da lSS 9 *. la C.l.A, recluto por corresponcleizcia '
a : jz\riano L. Pl.jto 2 'ydrigv.oo, elemenco do la hiirguosTa vllJ-.i-
ci;ro.va.
Pcstorlo^nxente la C^I,A, lo envfa a Pia^o PodrTgueo medJos-
de comunicacl6n y este rcclbe la miaija da organlzur I'oa red-
a Jz qna la C.I,A, encomionda el SLiminiscro e las bandas de -
aJoad's, la bus qua da da IstArmaclori milltar y el sahoiaie a o5
j3\:l .'OS econdmio^s,
A linos de l9o3 la C*I»A* comiertza a soiicitar tambien iafor-
TTieiciJa ecOfltfmicr en ^eoerai y en especial de la iadustria ezu^
cal c.ra.
Ec diciembre de 1952 se infiltran 2os Agentes C, J,A, Pedro -
Car.iorCn y Mamiel dal Valla Caral, por Orlentc,
Lao T:A.slones enco/ne/jda Ja/? por 2 a C,X»Am eran las de organJ_
zc . g}: .ipos de handldos eti Baracor. y G\iauU*>.ua.mo^ ademAa de
S3? •■'10 oar iugaros on las co^Uts para prodiicSr desembarcos
282
Hoja No,
23
y para sutninistro de armas y expiosivoa,
Por ""oca de Camarloca , Varadero, Matanzas, en abril de
i^ratoDder ii^fUtrarse Jos A^eutes C,X,A, Silvano Martf-
c--* . J7.>ri^ero, Bustillo, Poberto Parson, y Oscar Dfag,
c este (iltimc de Ja Sn/IUracii5n, Psca accifia es frus
i^:'.nch por Ja Mazdna de Guerra PevoJucionaria,
Si! ninyo de 1963 en el htgar conocido por *‘Subida de 2a Peaa"
cn Sj.u AntonSo , P/nar del Kio y dcspv.es dc recibir entrcDa “
xiijar:£-> en el exterior, se infiltran los A^onfea C*I*A^ Alber--
co dot Pusto Hernfindes, Jose A, Colmenares y Natuey Jnfanfe,
acoy.i;^ do t?n toam de infiltracidn, Estos Agenies reoli-
£:!.n :>? viaje e/i oi hi: qua mad re PE7C, pasando posteriormente a
vna Itricha tipo V-^30^
Ln. r:\iSi"-D. encomendada por la C,X,A, a este ^upo era la crea
c7.r? de una rod cue diri£*/a Del Eiisto y qua debia abarcar rfes--
d? Aiitonio basta Santa Luaa, en PI oar dal Plo.
Poz' ol esfero de Carraguao, Los Palacios, PInar del PTo el *“
<’) de mayo da 1963 so inf:7."raa despuSs de recibir cntrenamien
to, L:tls Garcfa Siglcs Meiaocai, J?o7aado Pern£nde3, y Arse -
rJo P?drfgues San KomSn, Este team part 16 de Estados Uni -
dos en al buque madre PEX,
E.ntre las misionos encomendadas por la C,I*A, el team tenia
la do sustituir al Padista de una red de auera creacidn, que se^
rfo c. partir de entcnces Garda SigJes, ocupar cetrgos el resto
del loam deatro de la direccidn de la red e introducir en ^sta-
arnicas y eouipos,
E'n Jt^nio de 1963 por el iu^ar conocido por Punta Fraile, en -
S ' 1 A.-itonio, Pinar del Rio, se produce la Jjifiltraci^D de los -
Ai:,'o:.to3 Clemente Incilin Werner y Genaro del Busto Infante,
Ln nisISn encomendada por 2a C,I,A, a era ha
cosj? ! tv-; far mediainr.s, ropas y vlvires n vnr. red reci6n c^’oa^
di.
283
Hoja W6. 2 4
E l At zona de Cayo Ui.HWco, C6rctejias, Matanza.s , sa prodtuce el
10 junio de 1*^63 la int'iltraci6n del team cornpaesto por Ma —
r: Ouiza Z>oca/, Jorge- R:iliin LiVL^r:>, Ev^ang^elio Ruftin Lustz*e,
r ^ ’do Lor mo Herrandoz, Jiirn E^.^jlnosa Gonzalez, Ricardo--
I -J33 Navair^to, Roberto de Josu*s Rodrlgr.oz Triana, Jorge
2~c i^v,3z TrSanz, Eddy Crispin Mors y Cu3raa *-
C ‘-do, gulenes partieroa de Ja Elcrtda cn un buqoa mailraf pa -
s .^'.J posterior morio a vna lancba, Eatc grttpo trafa Ja misi-in
(.hi C. de dlnamiiar y volar la Destilor/a Arrechavalaj -
p~. lo que coatriban con abundantc mot or ia I da damollclon, «ir—
jTi- •;, equipos de hombre raca y irn encronumiento espycial schre
ei - tlpo de ac Clones^
Pv ' Cyyo Empnlizadot Las Villas, el IS do Jvnio de 13 se in
fj. 1 Ics Agor.rjs C, I.jL Rolando TJatev. Pcz, Macuol hSorz-e--
r .'Stillo y Pycnciscc iJarrero C^.scSIlo,
Lp, nision enoomendada por la C. a este grupo fui 2a de -
■ .':i*'ar a dosa Individuos, iino en La Habara. y erro erj ,roai)eia
dj Spgua» ■
Por in zona ccnocicAn co/no Eosenada de VaUerte, Matanjas, se
ir.'Ih-raii en JuTilo de 1963 2os Agent es C, J. A. , Sebasuaa TS.pa-'
ne j Ryrfqiiez, Casimiro Ciero y Gervaslo Ri\*ero 2os qvo fue -
r^.. conducidos por ei i»i<cy:je raadre Tibur’in,
Lo rrJslon C. T. A. que venlan a cumplir era la de inf litre r aJ -
A_nr:-3 Sebastian Tapanes Enriquez,
El 33 de Julio de J9S3 por la zona de Cayo Verde, Las Villas -
so infiltran nuevamente los Agentes C,I,A, Rolando Ma^eu Paz,
i**fn 1.131 Marrero Cas^iiJo y Francisco iVfarrero Castiiio^ quienes
pr,- iamente fueron entrenados para introducir esplas y mate -
rir/.oo subversives en el pals.
La * lision C, I, A, encomendada en este case fue la de crear ~
u* .. .. oJ de espionaje on la zona, quo debta en prlncipio obrener-
ii,- :,.Tciua sobra eqitipos y bases militaroc.
284
Hoja No.
iVi Bnbla de Cr^.-^silda en Las Villas, cl 13 de agosto do -
y.'ia QTJiba.rcaciJ^:j pJrata doi Ci'upo Coiv.asda;: Mambiscs>-
da I.' r, A* atacJ i'sr t‘£i?£;:Tsij-'r?r;p,^rjii''5 Ja la Enipresa C-p
da dal PetrCdc'^ do oso. iccaiidud,
L'^s ciiacaatos dase-barcaron j cniplsnron i*o canon, ua mo.»
tc-i'O y d^o obuscs, c.rnas 6stas, cnl:vo z>ras, con las qua
d. Jar al a^aguo,
:x~ccadiado un c~-r*rc tongue y }o/^r 2 rarOi:t inipactos en var/n.5
ca^r.a d' .'IviaDdn da la aona*
J? u^• c a'Iembra da l^'Sj on el Jugnr cc:iocido par Cayo Grin^
en Br.. ~ :a, OrJc:. , y- .e ni'acada y dosi:.. I'irJa. tztuhner'a lo. in
diijjrid. . . ladaroiVi :. r iacalidnd, pc:r ai Cauco Conia ^.dcs -
AT;:;,iL‘; ir r.I servL '.a jj la C. T,A^ Bn diaba incvvi^ia
i ' aa-plosjc lay, y faaro.i ..•eupados on ol lugar, iras mo
cbijyj a :*-i aaplosiy: y y aianwis dv vavSas Hpac,
Bl da zc'^ubra do J.C‘^3 ol Jugar cono>c 2 d.J> por La Bi^n'’odti-
corzo j'ol Cabo Son Aajonio, Piri.r do2 Plo, so produce urta -
UL'sVc'i 7i' '.'ii'racion do Jos Aygouios C^I,A<, Cloments Inolan
Worn!:., Alborto do" 3asj^ Jicrndadas, Luis Monyoro Czrra:i^
nr. y IZ'bor^o Lisor.o. R^dr.lguos^
Ssta azciin fuo frrs'rada pop 2n acci*a da los Organos do Ja-
SagurdS-:d do CldiO.
A continuaoija apareco uno nntasira grdfica de Jos arm as, explosj^
VOS, mecios do comunicoci":i y otros ecf.dpos utUIzados por la
C, I, A., on 'os actividados scilo lades y quo ban sido ocupados por-
las aUiCj'.' dados cub an as.
285
287
291
862
294
JFK Exhibit F-654
ASPECTS OP THE QUESTIONNAIRE PRESENTED BY THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASINATIONS
OP THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES OP TEE UNITED STATES
INDEX PAGE
Im Alleged visit by Osvald to the Soviet Embassy in 1
Mexico City
II. Mafia ^
III. Anti-Cuban activities and organizations 3
IV. Oswald's alleged contact with G^an students in Minslc 6
V. Activities of E« Howard Hunt in Mexico 6
VI. Hijacking of planes 6
VII. ' Intelligence agencies 7
Appendexes
ASPECTS OP THE QUESTIONNAIRE PRESENTED BY THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASINATIONS
OP THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES OP THE UNITED STATES^
Several aspects of the questionnaire presented by the Connittee arc answered
in this report by topic.
I. ALLEGED VISIT BY OSVALD TO THE SOVIET EMBASSY IN MEXICO CITY
On this matter, we believe that the Committee should direct itself to the
Soviet Government.
As far as we are concerned, we can point out that, when Oswald asked for
a transit visa on September 27 in order to continue his trip to the Soviet
Union, the Cuban Consulate in Mexico called the Soviet Embassy, and weis
told that authorization to grant entry visas to ;ltff co^try * bad t cone
from the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Moscow, which would take around
four months.
295
II. MAFIA
Information on the role of the US Mafia in plans to asscissinate leaders of
the Cuban Revolution and other counterrevolutionary activities is found in
the revelations on this subject made by the Senate Committee in its report
on assassination plots a 9 ainst leaders of other countries*
The Mafia began its activities in Cviba during the *20Sf taldng advantage
of the corruption of the successive governments of that period.
During the *40s, it extended its control mechanisms in a covert way to the
trade unions of various sectors, which later allowed it a certain amount
of control over everything related to its interests* These interests
were strengthened with the March 10 coup, which is when the Mafia began
to invest its capital in real estate companies and the building of luxury
hotels, casinos and other tourist facilities, in order to push, and exploit
tourism*
The MaVt a » c business administration and operations in 1958 involved control
of gambling casinos in luxury hotels and cabeU?ets*
Santos Trafficante, the gambling delegate, represented the Mafia
leadersMp, and nK>st of the administrators of the casinos were Cubans
or foreign figures linked to the Mafia*
The gambling salons were directed by M£iffi 2 ^-appointed chiefs in charge
of the organization and operation of the gambling tables*
The Mafia made great profits from gambling* For exan^)le, the casino in
the Hotel Riviera made a net profit of $1*4 million in one year*
The Mafia *s interests were not limited to gambling, however* It also
controlled the traffic in drugs, jewels, the currency exchange, white
slavery and pornographic film shows*
When the Revolution triumphed in 1959, all the gambling salons were closed.
Later on, they were reopened because the Revolutionary Government considered
that, even though games of chance constituted a social defect, the sudden
closing of those casinos and cabarets would mean the loss of work for
,2
296
hundreds of workers. Therefore, a decree was passed on March 4, 1959,
regulating the functioning of the gambling salons and authorizing them
to reopen under the jurisdiction of the National Institute of Savings
and Hoiising (iNAV).
Among other things, the decree established that
- the caisinos would be operated exclusively by persons of proved moral .
character and that foreigners would also need prior approval in
writing from their embassies.
On September 28, 1961, those gambling salons that still remained open
at that time were closed definitively.
III. ANTI-CUBAN ACTIVITIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
The counterrevDlutionciry organization that immediately made a big
to-do out of publicizing Oswald's alleged activities on behalf of Cuba
was the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DBE), which put out a
special edition of its publication Trinchera the day after Kennedy's
assassination.
It gave extensive coverage to everything related to Oswald, indicating
that Cuba was linked to the events. Many of the assertions set forth
in the publication contradicted what was stated in later investigations,
especially data on the places where Oswald was and date on which he was
supposed to have been there, which shows the falsity of some of the
information it spread.
Four days after the cissassination, a US supporter of the Cuban
counterrevolutionaries announced during his radio program on Miami WQAM
that he bad interviewed several of them and that one of them had sold
he bad infoxnation that Oswald had been in Cuba in September and October^
1963 (vhen, in fact, Oswald was in Mexico, trying to travel to Cuba).
The alleged "revelations" of Frank Sturgis and other Cuban
counterrevolutionaries accusing Cuba of being responsible for lennedy's
death are also in evidence, accusations which were given an^le coverage
In several US papers.
.3
297
The counterrevolutionary organization La Crxiz was one of the many
sponsored by the CIA as a front to carry out its plans against Cuba.
One of its actions consisted in infiltrating counterrevolutionaries
Mario Tauler Sague and Armando Cubria Ramos in the area of Punta
Hicacos, Katanzas, in mid-1960. They had been trained by the CIA
and were on a mission to try to hill the Commander in Chief and carry
out various other acts of sabotage*
To help them in this tash, they were provided with detonators,
explosives, machine guns, pistols and proclamations of the countei^-
revolutionary organization La Cruz*
Another of the counterrevolutionary organizations, the Anti-Communist
Civic Resistance (eCA), was a grouping of the self-styled Army of
National Liberation (eln), the Movement of Revolutionary Recovery
(meR), the Montecristo Group and others* It was directed from' abroad
by Nino Diaz, a counterrevolutionary and CIA agent*
One of the plots worked out by the ECA was scheduled to take place on
April 7i 1963, in the Latin-American Stadium, with the participation
of 16 men armed with pistols and fragirientation grenades*
The group included Enrique Rodriguez Vald6s, Ricardo Ldpez Cabrera,
Onorio Torres Perdomo and Jorge Carlos Espinosa Escarles, who were to
be dressed in official Rebel Army uniforms and who were to assassinate
the Commander in Chief*
A few months later, another pl«m was elaborated, this time directed
against Radi Castro Euz, Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces,
on the celebration of the 26 th of July* The main coordinator of this
action was Ibrahim Miachin HernAndez, who took his instructions from
CIA agent Nino Diaz*
Some of the people employed by the CIA in the assassination actions
and other plans against Cuba were
Nino Diaz
A former captain in the Rebel Array, he participated in the conspiracy
hatched by traitor Huber Matos.
.4
298
He maintained contacts in the Naval Base of Gxjant^naiio , where he
trained mercenaries and directed various plans against Cuba*
In Miami, in the service of the CIA, he had gotten in touch with
such elements as Artime, Tony Varona, Diaz Lanz and Mird Cardoxia
through the Movement of Revolutionary Recovery*
Samuel Carballo Moreno
He was arrested in Meirch, 1963, in the operation carried out
against the counterrevolutionary organization Anti-Communist Civic
Resistance* He had been using fcilse documents in the yiAryu* of
Serafln Burgas Sabldn. He had been in the Navy prior to 1959*
Emilio Adolfo Rivero Caro
A CIA agent who was part of a group infiltrated into the country,
he had false documents made out in the naune of Carlos Ramirez Valdds.
This agent used the pseudonym of Brand for his CIA activities*
Adolfo Mendoza
A CIA agent who used the pseudonym of Radi for his enemy activities,
he was infiltrated into the country with Rivero Caro, mentioned above.
Jorge Garcia Rubio
A CIA agent who used the pseudonym Tony, he was infiltrated as
radio operator of the CIA infiltration team.
This group (Rivero Caro, Mendoza and Garcia Rubio) had the task of
reorganizing the counterrevolutionary organizations after the
failure at Girdn and of trying to kill General of the Army Radi
Castro, while staging a fake attack which the US Naval Base in
Gu 2 mtdnamo Bay was to make on itself*
Pierre Owen Diaz de Ure
His real name was Pierre Ouang Diez de Ure. He was one of the main
CIA agents involved in organizing the attempted assassination of
the Commander in Chief prepared for September 28, 1963, an anniversary
of the founding of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution
(CDRs). The plan consisted in dynamiting the sewage pipes under
the tribune*
...5
299
Pierre Ouang, a French citizen, V£is recruited by the CIA in 1961*
He served as informer for agent Francisco Blanco de los Cuetos*
IV. OSWALD'S ALLEGED CONTACT WITH CUBAN STUDENTS IN MINSK
Thus fcir,none of the Cuban students vho have studied in Hinslc have
been found to have had any contact vith Lee H. Osvald in that city.
We believe that this information, just like other statements
included by Priscilla Johnson Kcl*Iillan in her book The Making of a
Murder , is false, responding to sensationalist interests in the
midst of the campaign launched to link Cuba vith Oswald.
V. ACTIVITIES OF E. HOWARD HUNT IN MEXICO
We have no information about Howard Hunt's activities in 1963.
VI. HIJACKING OF PLANES
Antulio Ramirez Ortiz, a US citizen of Puerto Rican origin, was the
first person to hijack a plane to Havana, arriving on May 1, 1961.
He came under CIA orders and maintained a conflictive and diversionist
attitude during his stay in Cuba.
He was tried for illegal departure from the country and sentenced to
two years in jail. He left our country in 1975 i after the Swiss
Embassy had intervened with the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs on
his behalf.
On July 24, 1961, an Eastern Airlines Electra pleme with 33 passengers
aboard, en route from Tampa to Miami, was diverted to Cuba by a
passenger vho asked the press not to reveal his identity for fear of
reprisals against his family in the United States. He told the
journalists that he had taken this step because of repeated refusals
on the part of US officials to allow him to make the trip.
On August 9, 1961, Albert Charles Cadon, a French citizen, hijacked
a Pan American Airlines DC-8 en route from Hoviston to Guatemala. The
plane was returned and the hijacker extradited to Mexico at the
request of the Government of that country. There he was sentenced
to seven years in prison for robbery accon 5 >anied by violence and
threats.
. . .6
300
VII. IHTELLIG£NCE AGENCIES
The US Government began to act against Cuba through its intelligence
agencies, particularly the CIA, long before the defeat of the Playa
Girdn invasion — in fact, almost at the same time as, the triun5)h
of the Revolution.
After the Girdn defeat came Operation MONGOOSE, which ended in
November, 1962, according to a US Senate report, and consisted of
"the use of Cuban exiles and dissidents in Cuba" to overthrow the
Government.
The fact is that, even after that operation had supposedly ended,
the activities of US intelligence agencies against Cuba continued.
Some idea of the intensity of these activities can be gleaned from
the fact that there were more than 80 infiltrations along Cuban- coasts
between 1962 and 1963 in an effort to bring in weapons and ammunition,
carry out sabotage, infiltrate or exfiltrate agents, recruit
collaborators, supply CIA networks, etc., and that over 50 of these
occurred cifter November, 1962. Nor did the work of the agents
infiltrated or recruited before and dioring MONGOOSE cease at the end
of that operation; rather, it continued until it was eliminated by
Cuban security organizations.
The Appendix includes various documents relating to
• Oswald’s visit to the Cuban Consulate in Mexico (Application for visa and
the reply from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
• Correspondence sent to Havana by the Varren Commission in 1964, which shows
the C\aban Government’s cooperation with the investigation that Commission
was making.
• Identity cards filled out at the Havana airport by an individual purporting
to be Jack Ruby, who visited our country twice in 1959 •
• A brief summary of direct CIA activities in 1962 and 1963, accompanied
by graphic evidence of these activities.
7
301
Mr. Blakey. With your permission, I would like to read part of
pages 2 and 3.
The Mafia began its activities in Cuba in the 1920s taking advantage of the
existing corruption among successive leaders of Cuba. During the 1940’s, they ex-
tended their mechanisms of control, though covert, to the workers unions in differ-
ent sections of Cuba which would allow them in future to control everything related
to their entrants. These were strengthened with the blow of March 10.
Mr. Chairman, the reference to March 10 is a reference to the
date that then Senator Batista overthrew the lawful government of
Cuba at that time.
Continuing the quote:
A time when the Mafia began to build its capital through legitimate businesses in
structuring luxury hotels, casinos, and tourist attractions to exploit tourism. With
reference to the administration and operation of the Mafia in 1958, the same
possessed the control of gambling casinos which existed in the luxury hotels and
cabarets.
The don of the Mafia was Santos Trafficante who was in charge of all gambling
while the administrators of these casinos were primarily Cubans or forei^ers
linked to the Mafia. The gambling halls were under the direction of chiefs assigned
by the Mafia who made sure all of it functioned properly at the gaming tables. The
Mafia obtained great profits through these gambling casinos. We can cite as an
example the casino of the Hotel Riviera which in 1 year obtained a net profit of
$1,400,000. The business of the Mafia not only consisted of gambling but also
extended to control of the drug traffic, jewelry, foreign currency, matters of prostitu-
tion and pornographic movies.
Upon the triumph of the revolution in 1959, all gambling halls were closed.
We see, Mr. Chairman, that through Me Willie, if not others,
Trafficante may have had an association, at this point an associ-
ation only with Jack Ruby. How close or to what effect is as yet
undetermined. Now it can be fairly asked, could Santos Trafficante
also have been involved in plots against President Kennedy? The
committee’s next witness is Jose Aleman. Mr. Aleman is the son of
a former minister of education in the Cuban Government in the
late 1950’s. He was actively opposed to the Batista regime. In the
early 1960’s, he was supporting efforts to overthrow Castro. In a
context of mutual business entrants, Mr. Aleman and Mr. Traffi-
cante met at least once, perhaps on several occasions, prior to
November 1963. It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chair-
man, to call Mr. Aleman.
TESTIMONY OF JOSE ALEMAN
Mr. Preyer. Mr. Blakey, do I understand that Mr. Aleman also
wishes to invoke rule 6?
Mr. Blakey. No, Mr. Chairman, he has changed his mind and he
will permit both cameras and other recording devices to be operat-
ed.
Mr. Preyer. At this time the committee calls Mr. Aleman.
Mr. Aleman, do you solemnly swear the evidence you are about
to give this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. Aleman. I do.
Mr. Preyer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Cornwell for the question-
ing.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Aleman, where were you born?
Mr. Aleman. In Havana.
35-379 O - 79 - 20
302
Mr. Cornwell. Havana, Cuba?
Mr. Aleman. Yes, sir.
Mr. Preyer. I don’t believe Mr. Aleman’s microphone is on, or
put it in front of you a little closer to you.
Mr. Aleman. Thank you.
Mr. Cornwell. What was the occupation of your father in Cuba?
Mr. Aleman. He was Minister of Education.
Mr. Cornwell. Under President Prio?
Mr. Aleman. Under President Grau.
Mr. Cornwell. And how long did your family remain in Cuba?
Mr. Aleman. Well, until 1947, they came to Miami, and then my
father died in 1950.
Mr. Cornwell. After that, did you remain in Cuba?
Mr. Aleman. I was a student at Miami University and then I
remained in Cuba for some time.
Mr. Cornwell. Apart from education in Miami, then you contin-
ued to reside in Cuba until approximately what year?
Mr. Aleman. Well, 1960.
Mr. Cornwell. And during that period of time, prior to leaving
Cuba, you were active in efforts to overthrow Batista; is that cor-
rect?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. What basically was the nature of your role in
those attempts?
Mr. Aleman. Well, we were fighting against a dictatorship, to-
talitarian government, and we formed part of a few underground
activities in Havana.
Mr. Cornwell. Among other things, I understand that you were
one of the leaders of the famous attempt on the Presidential Palace
in 1957, is that correct?
Mr. Aleman. Well, yes.
Mr. Cornwell, After leaving Cuba, did you continue to be active
in attempts during that period to overthrow Castro?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. And, very briefly, what was the nature of your
role in such activities?
Mr. Aleman. Well, I tried many things, because in Cuba, before I
had tried to do something against Communist totalitarian regime
of Fidel Castro. Most of the activities, they didn’t have any success
whatsoever, because I was arrested many times, and there were so
many things over there that I had to leave the island, the pressure
I had.
Mr. Cornwell. In 1963, where were you living and what was
your occupation?
Mr. Aleman. I was living in the Scott Bryan. I had that property
of mine.
Mr. Cornwell. You were living
Mr, Aleman. That is a hotel. Scott Bryan Hotel.
Mr. Cornwell. You were living in Miami and you owned and
managed the Scott Bryan Hotel?
Mr. Aleman. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. During approximately that period of time did you
have occasion to meet Santos Trafficante?
Mr, Aleman. Yes, I did.
303
Mr. Cornwell. Who introduced you to him or how did that
introduction come about?
Mr. Aleman. Mr. George Nobregas came to me after we had
some other conversations with some other individuals and there
were American businessmen, and those American businessmen had
lost a lot of property in Cuba, then he came to me and he said
Santos wants to meet you. I some way refused because I had to
testify against Santos’ people in 1960.
Mr. Cornwell. All right, who was Mr. George Nobregas?
Mr. Aleman. Mr. Nobregas was in all the activities against the
Batista regime and also against Fidel Castro.
Mr. Cornwell. And do you have any knowledge of how it was
that he may have known Santos Trafficante prior to that time?
Mr. Aleman. The possibility that while we were smuggling arms
in the 1950’s they had all the connections with other Mafia people
and they came about to maybe he was connected with them.
Mr. Cornwell. So you have told us that when the suggestion
was first made that you should meet with Trafficante, you were
reluctant to do do, the reason being that you had previously testi-
fied against associates of his in a trial, is that correct?
Mr. Aleman. Correct.
Mr. Cornwell. Who were those associates?
Mr. Aleman. Sammy Mannarino and Norman Rothman.
Mr. Cornwell. The trial involved criminal charges and those
individuals were convicted; is that correct?
Mr. Aleman. I believe so. I am not very sure about it. I left the
Chicago grand jury in a hurry and I later on had some threats
from them and that was it. I don’t know, I didn’t even ask about a
trial.
Mr. Cornwell. All right. In spite of your reluctance, however,
did you ultimately go to one or more meetings with Trafficante.
Mr. Aleman. Yes, I did. I had various meetings with Santos
Trafficante.
Mr. Cornwell, And roughly during what period of time did the
meetings take place?
Mr. Aleman. July, June, 1963, around that time.
Mr. Cornwell. Where were the meetings?
Mr. Aleman, One of them, the meeting was at Junior’s Restau-
rant. Another was at the Scott Bryan, and I don’t know how many
there were, three.
Mr. Cornwell, The name of the restaurant was Junior’s?
Mr. Aleman. Junior’s Restaurant.
Mr. Cornwell. And the other meetings occurred at the Scott
Bryan Hotel?
Mr. Aleman. Correct.
Mr. Cornwell. What was your objective in attending the meet-
ings with Trafficante?
Mr. Aleman. Well, Mr. George Nobregas came to me and said
that J. J, Vila, director of public relations in the city of Miami,
wanted to see me because he had a message from President Bosch
of the Dominican Republic and President Bosch was a man that
was very grateful to my father and that he wanted to talk to me
about bringing to the Dominican Republic a lot of businessmen and
whoever wanted to invest there.
804
Mr. Cornwell. So you understood that it was a request from
people with business interests?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. That you assist in the introduction?
Mr. Aleman. Excuse me. At the same time, he said that one of
the possible individuals that was interested in going was Santos
Trafficante, going to the Dominican Republic.
Mr. Cornwell. All right, well, that then explains what you were
told about Santos Trafficante's reason for wanting to talk to you,
he wanted, I take it, to see if there was a possiblility of you
achieving some introduction with President Juan Bosch?
Mr. Aleman. That is correct.
Mr. Cornwell. What was your reason for attending the meet-
ing? Did you have a different motive or objective?
Mr. Aleman. Well, other than the objectives of trying to over-
throw Castro. He talked to me about, in favor of, the contracts in
Dominican Republic, that I had a project, condominium project,
and he wanted to facilitate the means for a loan with the Team-
sters Union.
Mr. Cornwell. So he suggested he could help you by securing a
Teamster’s loan for a condominium project you were interested in?
Mr. Aleman. Correct.
Mr. Cornwell. Now, it has been reported that at one of these
meetings, or on one of these occasions on which you met and spoke
with Trafficante, you and he engaged in a political discussion or a
discussion of the Kennedy administration.
Mr. Aleman. He did most of the talking. I mean, he was talking
about President Kennedy and this is a thing that I want to bring to
this committee that
Mr. Cornwell. Before you tell us what he said, if you wouldn’t
mind, tell us where the conversation occurred?
Mr. Aleman. At the Scott Bryan Hotel.
Mr. Cornwell. And in what type of room? Was it a type of room
that a guest would use?
Mr. Aleman. Yes; a pretty large room.
Mr. Cornwell. On this occasion, how many persons were
present?
Mr. Aleman. There was Mr. Macho Gener, Nobregas, separated
frorn the sofa and a chair, Santos Trafficante was sitting on the
chair, and I was sitting on the sofa.
Mr. Cornwell. It would be like a normal hotel room?
Mr. Aleman. It was a apartment, a large apartment.
Mr. Cornwell. All right, Trafficante was sitting in like a com-
fortable leisure chair, that sort of thing?
Mr. Aleman. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. What were the other two men doing? Macho
Mr. Aleman. Macho Gener was leaving the room at various
times and Nobregas was separating like he didn’t want to partici-
pate in the conversation.
Mr. Cornwell. And apart from the part of the conversation that
I want to have you explain in detail, why did this particular
meeting occur, was it part of the general conversations over the
business interests you have already described or was it of some
other nature?
305
Mr. Aleman, He talked various things. One of the things he said
Hoffa could not secure the loan so far because he had a lot of
troubles with the brothers Kennedy.
Mr. Cornwell. OK. So, in other words, he was providing infor-
mation on the same subjects that you had previously told us about,
the possibility of a loan through Hoffa and the Teamsters for the
condominium project?
Mr. Aleman. Correct.
Mr. Cornwell. Then, the conversation, was it a relatively brief
one or did it cover a long period of time on this occasion?
Mr. Aleman. It covered about 3 or 4 hours.
Mr. Cornwell. Was it primarily related to business or was it a
general discussion just between two people who sit down and talk?
Mr. Aleman. It was a general conversation.
Mr. Cornwell. And during this period of time tell us specifically
what was discussed, what was said by Mr. Trafficante, and what, if
anything, you said in reply with respect to Hoffa and the political
scene?
Mr. Aleman. Well, he was very much upset. He said that the
way the President was getting into Hoffa, a man of the workers,
blue collar, and a man that was a very hard-working individual,
and that at the same time he was very much upset, I mean, he
thought for a long period of time.
Mr. Cornwell. Very much upset what Kennedy had been doing
to Hoffa, and he felt sympathetic toward Hoffa describing him as a
man
Mr. Aleman. Very much.
Mr. Cornwell [continuing]. Of the workers?
Mr. Aleman. Very much.
Mr. Cornwell. Go ahead. What did the conversation lead to
next?
Mr. Aleman. At one point he said, “You see this man, he is not
going to be reelected, there is no doubt about it, he has been the
man that has been giving everybody a lot of troubles and he is not
going to be reelected" and I don’t know why he said that to me or
anything. Then he said
Mr. Cornwell. Did you make a reply to that?
Mr. Aleman. Yes; I said he has a lot of Democrats backing him
and so far it looks very well. I don’t see anything that he is not
going to be reelected or anything.
Mr. Cornwell. And what, if anything, did he reply?
Mr. Aleman. Well, he said he is not going to be reelected, you
don’t understand me, he is going to be hit.
Mr. Cornwell. Prior to that, had you heard the expression “he
is going to be hit,’’ the term before? Are you familiar with that
expression?
Mr. Aleman. Well, it is going to be hit with a lot of votes from
the Republicans or anything. I didn’t have any idea at that
moment, that is why I want to bring this to the committee. I don’t
have no possible idea why he said it.
Mr. Cornwell. Have you ever heard anyone use the expression
“he is going to be hit’’ on any other occasion?
306
Mr. Aleman. Not whatsever. I mean, maybe if you are talking
about something, I mean — that is all. I never, I never thought at
that moment anything whatsoever.
Mr. Cornwell. The question is, Have you ever heard that ex-
pression, “he is going to be hit''?
Mr. Aleman. In what respect?
Mr. Cornwell. On any other occasion?
Mr. Aleman. No.
Mr. Cornwell. In any of your activities in the attempts on
Batista or Castro, any of your dealings with Norman Rothman, or
Sam Mannarino, have you heard this expression?
Mr. Aleman. That was 1957, 1956, when we were trying to
smuggle arms.
Mr. Cornwell. OK, you had heard it during that period?
Mr. Aleman. No, no.
Mr. Cornwell. The question is had you heard that expression on
other occasions?
Mr. Aleman. No, no.
Mr. Cornwell. Well, then, if you hadn't when Santos Trafficante
said he is not going to be reelected, he is going to be hit, did you
ask him to elaborate on that phrase?
Mr. Aleman. To the best of my recollection I thought that he
was maybe saying at that time that he could provide a loan and
that he was making a story or he was upset about that, and then
he just made an alibi about the loan or something like that. That
was my thought about it.
Mr. Cornwell. The question was, when he used the expression
did you ask him to elaborate, to explain the exact meaning of his
phrase, “he is going to be hit''?
Mr. Aleman. He was talking, and I didn't, I wasn't interrupting
for about a long time, and he kept on talking and talking and
talking, and that is it.
Mr. Cornwell. So the answer is you didn't ask him to explain?
Mr. Aleman. I didn't ask him anything. I just took it like some-
body saying something, and I took it as you know, like he is talking
about a lot of foolishness.
Mr. Cornwell. OK, let me see if I can get what is in your mind,
then, as to the specific details of the conversation.
You first brought up Mr. Hoffa and the pressure that Kennedy
was placing on him. He then suggested that Kennedy would not be
reelected. You interjected an opposing view that you thought
Mr. Aleman. No way, whatsoever?
Mr. Cornwell. No?
Mr. Aleman. No way, whatsoever.
Mr. Cornwell. You said
Mr. Aleman. I respect the President of the United States and in
no way whatsoever tried to say anything that I could take that the
President was going to have some problem or anything like that,
he just said maybe he is going to be, the way he said that word, I
interpreted with a lot of votes from the Republican Party or some-
thing like that.
Mr. Cornwell. After Mr. Trafficante indicated that he wouldn't
be elected, you said something in reply to the effect that you
thought he would be, is that accurate?
307
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. And at which point Mr. Trafficante replied no,
he is going to be hit.
Now, you told us he went on speaking at that point, is that
correct?
Mr. Aleman. You see, this happened 15 years ago and to the best
of my recollection I think that is the word he put. 1 am not saying
positively that, I mean, the wording he put was something he is not
going to make it, something like that, that is it, he is not going to
be reelected. In a long conversation like that I didn’t pay too much
attention on it.
Mr. Cornwell. Let me ask, Mr. Chairman, if we might show the
witness JFK exhibit F-602?
Mr. Fithian [now presiding]. Permission granted.
[A document was handed to the witness by the clerk.]
Mr. Cornwell. This is a newpaper article which we have
marked for identification.
Mr. Fithian. Does counsel wish that to be entered into the
record?
Mr. Cornwell. We would request that it be entered into the
record at this time.
Mr. Fithian. Without objection, it shall be ordered.
[The above referred to JFK exhibit F-602 follows:]
309
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. : ih#irajor#itofe*#fMfiBtoie#b#dlitoeii«lb
* laCoboaadCiftrawafuSawelattoMteMrboU-
lBf4H#hid#e«pp«lio»t«fto*lrw»bieil#)o*l^..
M«f|i‘i wUUa|B«»* to do to# OA'i dbty w#* wow oot
tbes h#*e resided iiplOMtloii.
Sam Gtoscwi and John ItowHi ar# to* tiw mobster# ’
ttnerahy ld«mUl«i withto# H»fi*cu ploL ^iblr« .
■ SaiitqTrafne*to*jr..wap#Tlup#to««#rt4mp#rt»tof
the Ara.lof It wM hbia»n.boto to Mtomi—dHaana,
who were atippoMd to carry ool the imirdcr.
Ttaf flcanto b teoereUy idesttftod »toe dib *f
'em florid#, but be b abooiMof theehbhtaibeMaUi#
loos# patieiial eonfedewiloii. One# tb« Afraey decided
totoTOtoih#mob,ttwMtoe»ttoW#toit'|Vi«k*iiifW
•busc# would b« sought AtoM aa#*l to# prtociH.
«0P3.b«taadUvtdtaCu&#.MihidlNinator|##rt»b^
lion thm end Hill b#4 a uunibef #f tmoepim to C»^
iro'i Moreoeer. bb protesatonal oiprrkiie*
. pud* him WeaUy >uii«d fof *M*s#te»Uon wort.
He bad learned to# btuliltm from bb Itober. Saaio |
Trafflcaate Sr., who cam# from SkPy to to Ibmpa,
wber • bo built and ran bb eriow ramify tar to# neat SO
yeaiiL III noi a y*#r after iurrtetog a rtm^ attemjg
«u bblife. SiDto Jr.iMtvadad bb tatom.
In to# fint taw yeara of bb rale. Tiinpn ■« pUfUfd
wlto gaatUnd mutdert Ka wai bhnmtf a bmitot #«#•
pecitolbtl«7barb#t#bop*aeetittodnfAto<ttAMato-
lU. to# old cb)«f of Mardcf lacarpofBtcd. Acnmpanled
.by a Cuban amodale, 'naineam# had b#bi to Anaau.
ala's New York b««t aitlto too nlgHt betara to* tolling.
According to r#porti of lb# Smut# Permbnenl Inemtlf*'
ttooj Cdmsdttc#. Anaausto ta#d bora attmnpitat to
. B»f#toOBTr*Hie*at#'iCUhMfambHnfOpeTaH#»
tb# foUowtag moBib.'trafftcaai# w» arrcslcd It to#
Mafia Mttonal coneeattoo at ApalacMs. N.Y. Ten yem
laifT. hb «mta#iK# waa agalp conlinsad by bb
BMC at tot U Sidto ftmuuraa* to New York wlto Car.
|09 HirceOa. Carl# CamWa# *bd iteeral other Pf th#
.counlryjleadtogdoni.
He wa». to ibort. one of the major c rim* boM« to iho
failed suit# and, tigntficantty. th* doa most decplj- af.
fecied by CabroY rerOtotiom Not only wer* hb gam-
bUng cutooa leUed bul he bad been Jailed to Cuba. Ono
would aininir toil sock a man might t»v* cpniA^Acd
Utong on Cutio ladap in d im lly. At toai tuyto 1900. :>
Castro’f grip ott Cuba wai by so means lortfO. Onto
Trarflcanto accepted bb QIA eommbitom.l'abro-# day*
abooldbaet^Bumbsred. . _ —
A Question of Loynllirt-
beroT*ttoBayofPlp.Aeem«bearymtowhytooplan -
falM. Obo etnbn b toal too aotomtoKlM to adntoto^ ,
ter tha pobon neeer cum* thfoogb; nnoiber. tost OHIO
" iiopMffUtagtotoortatMtnni.
' The mom toirtgutog toeoey wm propomd by the cub
„idepotHMpector gracral. Scau Bmhefiridfe. to a Sem
bte staff member, Breehanrtdge. who bad been responto
U# lor tovcsUgaling to# OAMafia pM. matotalnad that
Yrafffcante bad been proriduig Cislto sSb dHadt Of
^ plot all Btotir II'". JT'
But why would Sanio Trafficante. of an pcofUa db
1 Bwrau «f
Harcotica^'Tbata ore uneonfinned romors In too Cuban
-> ■ lefuieo impulWdO to Miami that, when rsdel Caitro ran
'7* to# ABietican racheteen awt of Cuba #nd leteod to# toto
am. be kept SaaioTraffieaBtf Jr. to Jal tlTiimhoit o^
pear that he bad a pcnonal dbtlkc |ar TnfQcaole. «hcn
- -lnfactTraf/ieaptebaaaienlofCaslro.Tra«lcMUebab
Irgedly CiUraY outlet lor Hlefil eoutraba^ to too
fouhlry"
The r#^ goearon m*ouBa«tolB« toouadktary am .
wu on TralflcaataY retatleniblp with Ckbro tori.bw«
of tu date, tlm aUffUttona qpoled Bto of great to>
Iciat Back In iwi. too MafUY aailCaslip crcdtbUab
- were impeecabto. Ibo IstarMBb railed on by to* »*#►,
. c«Uaag«DU may ba««M wrong to totlreeiictoiboib'
blit li.to bard to think of a pomlWoetforertef matbo
tarfabricating lurh a itoiy.
• n*e* arc other indieatlo» that tocr* may barabaan
■omt worklat arrangcMot between Castro asd lb#
' loob Seeeral r#li»l# wUneaa## — »»» notably Cnym
■ t#oLyncb. who w»as«nlorcis#ofneerwltolh#aAto
‘ Mbml for eight years — amert that during to# cradal
rariy ItoOi Castro relied on Cubes Hafb ceotacb for
much of bb intewiencc Is to# title comanslty. Asd
•doK again Saate Tnmcaot# cmerito as a central r>ii_
' hre, for Castn b reported to bifo ptiSSTtS^ar
ageatt tbroiigh toe Floilda oumhei# racket — Bottta — ^
■ ' whicb Tra/ftcantc rttna.
Mere asotber Bureau of Narcotics report ^thls ^
prepared b>‘ »grui Eugene MaitoaH^ls tosiroethe:
' ’ ^ . Fidel Castro has opendrea to Tkmpa and Miami
maUDgb*av)BobubeuwitbSastoTrafncasieJr.Yor-
gintmtlou. The wtanlbg BMita nunbor# ar# takas from,
toe last tore# dlgiu of the lonery drawing In Cuba eeciry
Saturday night" According » thb report, prior to too
drawing. tocM operaitoe# communlcaw wHb Cub a yd
■ adrise wbirt nomben are reeeiftag toe boariert piqr*
• The Cuba loiten- of f >«aU then rig toe drawtng . . AC.
' cording to ton report and otocn. Cistfo'i ageata were
■ robbing TrafficaBt# of a Urge share of bit profltt. Tha
- • NarcoOa Bureau was afraid that If Ttaf fleaaiteY Bobia
■ eperaiton were ruined, he wmiM coucratraw cfCB maeo
I ’ on the drug trade.
‘ • But Trafficanie was to an' ercs bettor poatUon Ibas
.* tb* foda to know about raids on bb profl to Had bo cbm
sen to. be could ba»t wired the problem overnighR by
abtftiag toe payoff nuaben from ib« Karana IMtcrr to
,toe weekly dog racm to Miami, a# be ftoaBy dMtotoo
. ujel9«a.!f,to#n.toewr*poftoar#tob#beir»td,Ttom*
oania'a BoUta may bar# aerred u os# #f tb* psymatoor#
. to to# Cuban to toUigcnc# network to to# Unliad Stall#.
.ir* 0 THOSE ONLY kwely fimlltor wMkCbba to lb#
... 1 ltafl0. a Bdtor l taf lrt tBtrfc a toral*t>af«.ltnmt
. s^a abiufd to tttggmt tost tot usdarworM could CDi>
. • latnnitc wnh Caiire'a to tatUftBce But tot Mafia to Bto 0
»^.«HWollto and sot all or ns braoebm bad bats Catord'a
^oacmimL Tb# Malta bad ^ad most oflis bets mi to#
*. .dictator rtogeneto Buma. but it bad abo larroi aa too
runscf* tar to* rerotatiosarica. Casun. Bt w#l a#
• jruuotbtr important Cubam m toottonmy Itoderb bad
. • prerjouriy *alt with aid reUad #n ooa or tPtotarw
. .gerworld tamlly for arma toortT os tootl^
■ -wta too ownen asd aauagm of too hutary bBiato asd
' (xshltogcutooatoeMHarasa.tooMiftobodptoy*d«
..pervidva rat* in Cubaa hfo SoM afiar CMro'a rictofy
- Ill Umd«ra were no toogar «#toam# to cubs an Ma «par»>
T he IMtlAL BLOT caB#d for potoontoc Cadra In
bis faroritt Hir»oa rcotaaraat. wber o oso Of Trof.
rimau's BMS worked. Tb# ClAYTKlulcalSerriceoDM-
btu. who wai eooHtoittai the mob’a oftarta tar lb# a A,
pame4 to SB otota amoctatfd wBb Tnf neast# #i to* row
Ulacblea Hoto^ In Miami Baacb. From tbtro Traffl'
cantiscourlor waaiodeUVrt toe pob«» pllb i» totmas
InibeHaranareMaoraBti ,
Alt of tob took place tn Maceb and April #C tW, Juik
,-tiOBS bor* progrmsr*ly etoaad dowK ini It toto hM
4rten^ and fORser taoatoom amactoim high to CaMOb
■^lortcBBWL Tb# ctimptotoiy of to# MafisCatort r*>
•..aiootolp M oaampWtod by to# amtoguiilto tom otoWttoB
^:to# iBtorMooiMst asdrtlawof ItafFwasi# blmoall IB
.‘taCfc
Hwmatim#wb#ntooua*odaof •srtta#i#f toOlorm
;*fcttos tosd Trafltean to y
^ Buraao of Naccotk# report wfgmto lb# pmdbllliy tom
310
Haeanot 19 S 9 : Santo TreJJicanta*» orraM.
:u M MTMd to ««rk vlib Cutn^Aod OtfUkH^ilioft
j^ 3 j(]«ilgiiadi»pr«MMtcavtr. Bat olAcMIir. b« fM tot
* of Ctba tlUlL*a to Utt itrrlCM of UuoHUtcMl U«T*r.
‘(ifMl Csida Banco. Boato li bbOMlf aootbtr fooi O'
"naiiiaot ibM cn‘t aatblfolUM ^ sot loM ooeviao Mo
ItrqUMr Jo tytoma od U om of CMrotctoMOt M«at
wMotn. (Ho la Cm‘$ npilar haoMvll cftitaor
^ t« tbo inMIator «f apor^ 1 praaHllno pMio Otel
. Ate|fttlttsT»ifleo«uoatofCabo.Baacoatoyidoo
br tho tsrMikn nni oma-fBwi ante moMooaoy
' •ioTcnaosL Theo, ta IMl ho ton for MimsL vb«o bo
'' ciaelothoiit«9itoofltofodcnlaatt<rtBOflrlkotam
^hkb bo4 ItarncoaU ttodcrnmctlUaco. Accortflot to
cao itttto fotco otncui tbt itoo BOO boA wbot
oMSstod to 0 ‘fatborooo fajattoBaMp" Bgbt vootbo
bur Buao na aandod Bad »Uod to SpoM f or poadOB
■ .«HBicrtMlAB 4 ncoaBoan' w
Stfislfkaacijr. B^o la ae« bocb 10 Cute. Ibal io bo>
^cnoax oob onBroip. vbatoocr bla faetfijr wo o n tao^
«bool4 find Ilf 0 polatiUo la iboofv Ctabo tool tool c»
- rtouB. Bal than aoca to bo aoiblat but eoobidicdeao to
iboltfotoylM M TMOeuu oad bto Moo^
cvTCBcy la enirr to booknpa ih« rcoaotny ood bribe
doom tbt f OTtnuDtst la mnni bt vMted to bt oM« to
maloUia Us f aaiMtac up w a to aua . Alcnm bod fo)c«tcd
Us offtr- Ho tried to oooM •otUytBf, but tbe FBI ro-
tBladod Mat thot. U bo Ai aot coopente, bo nlfbt bo
aubjMt to proaccuUott for Mopl guo roBBbig.
Altoiaii'B rHaikmaUpoMlbc FBI bod latliaQjr bofu
■ bootilo. Tbo TV o dtorto da ^o«a a« tnaod btmekb" «x*
plalatd Goergo DovK urboasoaslgDcd to awoltor tbo
txUt octhrWeo ood tbo FBI bod Mod to clooo H down.
But by lato IflM tbo Buftai hod causo to cbiago tts
mind. Alofluii bod tiattod tboSMie Deportmeai to irtm
tbot FWri Castro va a Co^uiilJt. ood b* portuodod
oao of tbo ComMunliWwoloBwutioo ataytag attboTro-
dtwtada to briof iht FU oo tbo oaturo of tbo parly la
Cobo.
Alt of Ibis stood Alcmao tofood auod wHh tbo Miami
m o? flco. piritnlsrty aftm Castro mealed bla politi-
cal affUtatloiiJ. Aod aftor bb tesHamoy la tbo Fotbmau
trtal. Aleman's retotloaabtpmidi tbo Bttreou grow very
clooo. Tbo FBI men caoM tonly oa Ub, not only as a
iBcftil souret of Infonuttoik but aa a gtddo to BBdor^
itudiag itacc^oai and tbCMdng of tbooaBan.*jQao'a
a real nko feUaw,** tbo jwm retired Dvrb remarked
lijrcteriotu Gniilttd*
-:,T7‘GB 'TtIZ NEXT BAXt of TkaiacamTa bMwey Jd.
*jr COntomto Joa* Atomot tnoadoln Mtoadntoo
tfosa Istolvnd «tib iVaffieaaio In ttO tbroogb bto
i^ASia. Cotto Baagok Atamn bad boon a tieb yonae
4prUCl3C»y la Harm, oaa of ibo toodaa «f Om ob
DST utaA on Bansto'k prnddcnatol pib
>;». BSf ttotoWstoda^moMtb bad eno bioi Mm lo
w'riir&tn • baak M Florida arborc bo onod tbo Ikadm
1 'jsit KiMi and oibar real omam tadad
rural Smdlau-TUo TlaCmiato figwad pnmd
‘Jr -*^|8tbormlbtiDn,ftaobyUSTBaamoftba toidtat'
I .':l3UiianrlmM!fmBabadnodlntaoMln;lBcMdlat
iiuay of Castro's fotionera. and moil amdad np by may*
jaetborr at AJcaua'aoipcaao.
Aftar tbo motodon. AMmai returtod to Cuba aad
Stayod a year before bo one forced lato oMIo ag^ —
this time aa a pouatar inulittontry. On arrHag In tbo
.. Valted Slum, bo was ly Cw Daria of tto FW
with a subpoona loappoarjaa arluiiaa agalamaMaflm
luntodNonaanltotMimnaiatrialtaCUc^
Alcmaa bad bad freqbaat dcsliop %db tbo Mafia
■lAra bo boytiig guns lartbt rerolntloa Ho bad t^
Rutbatan In last wbea tbo toner s»as irytng losoTObla
Cttaa toTOStmeats by togrtUartog binuoll witb tbo aatl-
BaUsu forces. Rotbuun offeeed to flood Cuba with fako
‘Hc'io rcllabio JadlriduiL"
Afpr bis appesraaet ot RoMmon'a Irtol, Aleman con*
tlnatd to meet rcfutoriy ntb Mi coolactB at tbo FBI to
report on exUoa bo suspcciod if betag Cbatro Bgenta. Ho
alao told tboB of an iitnaadniry acrici of SMOtlnga
eritbTraffictnio.
.Trifficnntc*g 1 ntiiscf«lMHi
W HEN ALEMANB FATHEE died bto stepmother
labtrttod tDOBl ot tbotataac and the toberttaaco
Uioa wort ao Mgb that Jom JO. twbo bad riraady Mat bto
land boMtatp In Cabo to tbomototton) mo toreod to
atO tbo Mtont Stadium aod tboiyadovtada Motot By
XPSZ bo mo la debt, irttt bto Hly aaot the ibraummy
Scott Bryan Motel on mums A eonno and bad St, In Ml*
Soma lime m September onsa an dd rmmIuttooiTT
coUoarw erbo rantad an iftni to t at tbo moiol toM
Akman that TtafflCHMo mntod to oao Mm. Ibo col-
loaguo oiplalaod that lyafIktoU foR todoblod to Ate*
nu B cotola. CareU Baoid md arantod to exprem bto
gratltudo by belptag Atemaoontof btoftnanctoldlftlcul-.
Teamsten Uatoo. Atedao's titoad aonwod Mae tbot too
toon waalilrfoetly l^sl and dot B bad almdy boen
clctrod by Jlaimy Hotta Mm am f
Aleman was undanraadildy loary — particularly
311
tiacc bt tud M muUy UiUfM ifilaM « U»t\» tMd«r.
B« lUM ew»«b. ttf Tm|» fodIi<bw A»^
at th* Scott Bryaa Md^ffcrtd bin tbe lou — II S nU'
tlcQ m replace tbe rarntbacUa »oul with ■ ttetonr
lUs wonder. coopMa «ttb a pnibottM ipartiMat for
Aiemas My< that ttnltlcirto epenl moet 6t tbe cw
iBf p&Uappbmag. He alaort poeUotUy abwt
deooerKy a^ell Ubertlei.- But then be tuned to tbe
Keooedyi: they were not booe rt , they took craft lod
they dM not keep a bargalo. Hecenplalned about tbdr
atucki on hla Meodi. HytoC. “Hare you ^een bow hh
brothae la bntlat Hof fa, a mas wbe ft a worker, wbe la
not a mUUosalr*. a lrti^oHbohhie«oUan?Hedo«n‘t
know that thli kind of eacoMicr la rery delicate. Uaik"
tay worda, thia mu Keabedy li to trouble, aad he wfb
let what beomlflctoblm.''Alwauiotyalbatbearfiied
that Kennedy would |«c raetactad. and Ttafflcante rw
plied, 'No. Joie, be If going to be htt~
Alemu laya that be reported tbla conaemdoo to Wa
m eotttacta. who exprtMd tetorot Mly to TnUW
cute'a bustoeaa piopoaato Alaitiili aawubod Ibat tbef .
dhnltoed t^ Kennedy wmtofi aa gamlapd braggadoi
hla boitocai bcadqaartan rwntog u apaitinent wbe»
trer ba came to Um. Alcau omc aM htan frequently
todlaaia tbaTeuDaiea toan and Tkuftkaaie won bw
— gia to load -Altman data ottoer tow*, of MMneeaattono >
ajid to Introduce bin to otbar Hafta rtgurca like Angelo
Ktme of PbUadelphto Alemn, bkn bb FBI eotoaeto
cottM not qalie ftgww out whai TraMleaiito waa doing.
Bai ba ptoyad'wloBc, heptof Iho lou would cone
throitfb. Alio the ni contodered Ue Inf ematton *ato»>
■ bleaadhdwenplAHtobedfanretc*’
,SuittQ| to late IPO and caattaulni tbfough the now
■ am of ISCX Atomu aaya that' three Oubana .he bad
kaaowB to Eaeua aad atiha tkndcwlDdA wbe had guoo
in work I or Camo aftar tbe icrehittaB, pppearnd to Mb
smi and ibnn toft for Teiaa Ha anepectad them W being
Cnbn ecanti «ad bn toM tbla to ibe m n adalMd ihe
TBI to loBf cooTtmtloiii that J iboogM aoiaethtoi wia
lotoi to bippca. . . Lwu teOtoi them to be tarefid.- By
Ibta nine ATemairioya be waa meettol quite frequently
with bla FBI eooucta. They Imeoed to wlul b« a»ld but
rarely >«m*d InlerertwJ to bto tpccvtotlOGa.
About the end of October. 19M. Ibe aame exile who
had Introduced AJeman to Traf fteapu uked Aleinaa to
sign a peuuon bitterly critical of Prealdeet Keanedy.
waa BO great admirer ef tbe Kennedyx. He
algaed the petWon hot tnuBedWaly had aecon^
ttaoagbti. capfctolly when B waa repredoced to aeveral
Cnbao newfpaprrt to Mtoi&i
On the day ef tbe Keoaedy atuaalcutloo. AlrcuB ar-
rtred botne to find that the FBI bad tetophooed. "I waa
worried tbai, becauae of the peUUoo,tbey might auapect
me." But wbat they weft tatoftitod to waaTraffleaotoa
pRvloua ittiement tbiiKenBody waa gotof lobe "blt.“
-TWO agtBto [AleBiBJi la quite certain one ef tbeo via
Paul ScraatoB] f-"** out to are me. They waatod to
know more aad DoraL I finally bad to toll them be didn't
sap he waa gotof to do ft H e pot tald K ennedy waa
■ fotog to gel hit" TbiTgenti lUfad'umB they had ea-
plered every poailble eagle and then loU Aim ecu* la-
keep the coBranalloo coandeonal.
The only aource for all of Ibla la Aleman, who datana
that be penonaUy repnted cecrytteg to varioue tofV
cull ef tbe FBI. eapeetally George Itoeli and Paid Senn-
toD to 1W2 and 19Q. Both ageau acknowledge their fr^
mcBl on Alcnus'a coavenatleea wttta Traffkanto.
Scranton expUtoed be wenid ba«e to have deanner "t
wouldn't want todn uytbtagto esbamea tbe Burton."
Th« Eftemy of My Enemy
I N sasONG to dotrey both tbe Cbura rtglBe and
ibeMalU captoe. tbe Keeaedyibnd areuacd two dm-
pente eoeolea. each wtUt n tcadltlM of ebdeoee and
eorertactloo. No pctof that eitbtowto connected with
tbo amamtoaUen of PreUdcnl Kennedy has em been
priced. But their tndlUona and their predleament at
iba nootnt when Kannedy waa cur down sake ettber
otlflbU suiptota. And whan tbe twwfroot war that tbe
Kennadyt wero wagtog U dewed Ibitogb tbe cxpeiV
enee of SantoTtomcaaiA it beconaa attout iDtortoitog
to fpccuUto on Uto pomlMIMy of tbeao two powen oper*
attoglneonceTi.
Tbe ptoailblUty becomea e*« mere toulgntog If one
cbooaea to take aedoualy n memoraadato to tbe director
ot tbe CIA recenOr decUaairied from tbe Weera.Com*
mhtknt fUea. It repocta Ibe coBTaetatten of a Bdtbb
Joaraaliit. John WUmb (abo known ai WllM»Hudson> at
tbe American Embaiay to Loodos >id four daya after
^Kennedy waa tolled. BltomuM tbto to lalt to Cuba after
the revolution la l$9» be bad met an AmcricaD "giDgs-
lihe lot* Soml^HmcwMb -
ter-gambler natsed Saotoa who could not return to tbe
U5Jt bceiBie there were aeversi (odirtaenUoutaUDd-
tog agalaat bla.. Santa opted therefore w renuia to pri>
aoB for a pcfted ef time paying Cattro to doUira for bu
rather luxurtoua end definitely noo’priaonllke accom*
Bkodattoon^ While Santa waa to prUon," Wibon ny\^
■'Santa wax etiited by an American gangatee type
named Ruby."
It h tempting to make muck of auch a decunient but
• more necdi to be known about Ibe Ebgitab jetifBnlM,
about tbe memo aed about lack Rsby'i tnveli before
any coochislenf can be made. Prehabiy the only wlum
who could help intwer the i|oeMlou rabid bccc are tbe
CIA'a oM Ifafli amoebtoa. Tbe Churcb cearnmeo only
managed to interview ooe of tbem, John RraeU. San~
Giancana; due to give hb taatimofor. waa executed the
day hefae. Santo Trafflcaate wu never called la a wit-
Bcaa. The cemmlttM staff claimed be could net be
found.
Neae of tbe extraordtoary paalHUtta that have sur
faced been offer n docunnUblc rtftitatlou ef ihe»le
nmasito theory. Aa to all aueb explorattaof Mtadog on
the Keonedy awawlnaiton. the trad goa oli w It a^
proacbes DaUo. Bin that doto nat mean that there WM
not a conspiracy. Theft to limply no MNcande that enw^
aplreclca, wbuihcyexbt.inBmtocviiatoyaMMinUghL
Natty seervU prove not alt that bard to ko^ •
Just consider the numbers of people who know about
tbe CIA's sccrit war against Cub* in the early tpaCb —
about the Agency's mammoth luUon In Mbrnd trilb Bs
400 caw officcn. Rs ZjOOO Cubno iteatn. lb savy and '
small air force, toemnibw safe houses, tod iw pa famb
tiry opertUtott agalBK TOTto. Certnto^ thoumda of
pw^ bad a ntbericneral knowledge of that miailvu
campaign. And yrt It was not until Imt yar that the
American public even learned that Praaldent Kennedy .
bad gooe on to wage a covtct Cuban ww aftto the Bay of
Pigs. SimiUrty. nine yean ago. Drew P earieu and Jack
Anderaai reported Ibe CIA'S aaaateatbn | btltog wllb
tbeUafla. Buthoboe paid atty sftefiUmL
It to a wrU known paythologicet p ben otoepon that you
cani sM what your tmagtouion b Ml p cape f od to ae>
cept In a recent Interview. Sen. Howard Babur tibTcnnl
nficeted on hb ckperieoce ov«r the paaHUw yoen to
expioftai Watmgato and the wdHd of U3. bilaBlgiiirr
Tbe irtal fear that I bevo to that nt wek w up 40 yum
ftom BOW, and It wlU an suddenly tan Into pto M .nnd fa
- resum wbnUdnmn fooU wsa’I^rTT- <
♦ o ae — kow
312
Mr. Cornwell. It is an article written by Mr. Crile.
Mr. Aleman. Correct.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you know Mr. Crile?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. I would like to direct your attention to the para-
graph on the second page of the article, about halfway or three-
quarters of the way down the middle column on the page, begin-
ning, “Aleman says that Trafficante spent most of the evening
philosophizing,'' and then it goes on. I would ask if you would read
that paragraph to yourself, just read it to yourself.
Mr. Aleman. I can't read it to me because I can't find it very
well.
Mr. Cornwell. You can't find that paragraph?
Mr. Aleman. No, no, I can see it.
Mr. Cornwell. It is the second column from the left, about two-
thirds of the way down.
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. Just read it to yourself.
Let me ask you
Mr. Aleman. The letters are too small. Will you please read it to
me?
Mr. Cornwell. Have you seen that article before?
Mr. Aleman. I seen the article but the letters are very small.
Mr. Cornwell. Let me ask you, you said you know Mr. Crile, Did
he interview you on the same subjects that we have asked you
about here today?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. Over what period of time?
Mr. Aleman. Many days. Many days.
Mr. Cornwell. Prior to publishing the article, did he call you
and advise you that he was going to do so, to print the matters that
you had provided to him?
Mr. Aleman. Yes; he said he was going to publish under Wash-
ington Post an article.
Mr. Cornwell. Now, would you have had any reason to make a
statement to Mr. Crile which was not accurate? Would you have
had any motive or reason for making such a statement?
Mr. Aleman. One of the things that I couldn't answer was the
visit of Santos Trafficante.
Mr. Cornwell. Excuse me, what was the answer to that ques-
tion, if you wouldn't mind?
Mr. Aleman. I couldn't answer why Mr. Santos Trafficante came
to me to go to Dominican Republic, while at that time we had a
conversation with some American businessmen that had properties
in Cuba, and those American businessmen said they were going to
try and they wanted me to do something against the Government
of Castro, and then later on, these people said that they were going
to give me a loan on a condominium project that they wanted to
give me the loan and at the same time, this loan was going to be
financed by, and that is why, the only reason why I went to talk to
Trafficante because later on the thing about the Dominican Repub-
lic.
Mr. Cornwell. Yes; those type of things, of course, are set forth
in Mr. Crile’s article, as you recall?
313
Mr. Aleman. Yes; we discussed many things on Crile’s article. I
can tell you one thing. Trying to remember after 15 years all these
things that occur is very difficult. There is no doubt about that.
Mr. Cornwell. I understand.
But, let me ask you if I might, to go back to the earlier question,
would there have been any reason for you to make any statements
to Mr. Crile which were not accurate? Would you have had any
reason for doing that?
Mr. Aleman. Well, the context of a newspaper changes. You are
talking to a newspaperman and he is asking questions and he will
ask questions in such a way that when I saw the article, many
things, you know, I was trying to recall.
Mr. Cornwell. OK.
Mr. Aleman. I was trying to recall a few things, I was trying to
recall one time that he said, how many times have you talked to
the FBI about these meetings between Santos Trafficante and the
Dominican Republic, and I said, well, I told the FBI the following
things.
Mr. Cornwell. So you are suggesting that perhaps the material
in the article may not be exactly correct, that it might be some-
what taken out of context, or is that the suggestion?
Mr. Aleman. It is not a matter of taken out of context, sir, it is a
matter that when you are trying to recall. He said, we want to sit
down and recall everything that happened, and I was trying to
recall the many opportunities that I went to the FBI, to inform,
about many things that were happening during those meetings.
Mr. Cornwell. What I really want to find out is what the best
memory you have on the subject is. OK, so let’s start with the
article.
Is the article an accurate reflection of what you stated to Mr.
Crile?
Mr. Aleman. Some of the things I say are out of context.
Mr. Cornwell. They are out of context?
Mr. Aleman. In some way, I mean.
Mr. Cornwell. OK. You know Mr. Crile, correct?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. Is it your basic impression that he printed or at
least attempted to print the material accurately based on what you
said to him?
Mr. Aleman. He might have, but they didn’t come — then when I
start thinking, and trying to remember, and trying to remember
everything, it wasn’t in context.
Mr. Cornwell. OK. Let me then show you what has been
marked for identification as JFK exhibit F-601. May we have this
exhibit admitted into evidence, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Fithian. Without objection, so ordered.
[The above-referred to JFK exhibit F-601 follows:]
314
Excerpts of Interview of
JOSE ALEMAN, Jr.
By HSCA Staff Investigator Gaeton Fonzi
March 12 , 1977
. . .Aleman said in more than one way that Trafficante
did specifically tell him that Kennedy is "going to get
hit". He also specifically confirmed the quote that Crile
printed in the Washington Post and this point; "Aleman
says that he argued that Kennedy would get reelected, and
Trafficante replied, ^No, Jose, he is going to be hit’".
Aleman said that Trafficante told him this as part
of a long conversation that lasted from sometime during
the day until late at night in a room at the Scott Bryan
Hotel. He was vague as to the actual date of the conversa-
tion, but Crile puts it close to his meeting of Trafficante
in September, 1962. Aleman says Trafficante was rambling
on in a philosophical way about democracy and socialism
and communism. He also said that Trafficante brought up
Jimmy Hoffa's name and said that Hoffa would never forgive
the Kennedys for what they did to him. Aleman said he got
the impression that Trafficante was hinting that Hoffa was
going to make the hit, not him, and that Kennedy
would never make it to the election because of Hoffa.
This, says Aleman, was the one aspect of the conversation
with Trafficante that Crile did not properly put into
perspective in his piece, otherwise the piece was very
accurate.
Since the conversation with Trafficante took place
over such a long part of the day, Aleman says there were
many people in and out of the room during the course of it.
However, he believes that at the time that Trafficante was
talking of Kennedy, there were two others present besides
himself and Trafficante: George Nobregas and "Macho" Gener,
the latter being Traf f icante ’ s top man in his~and the Mafia's
relationship with Cubans...
JFK Exhibit F-601
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Aleman, that is an excerpt from a report of
an investigator of ours, Gaeton Fonzi, dated March 12, 1977, and I
would like to specifically direct your attention to the first para-
graph which reads as follows:
“Aleman said in more than one way that Trafficante did specifically tell him that
Kennedy is “going to get hit.” He also specifically confirmed the quote that Crile
printed in the Washington Post on this point:
“Aleman says that he argued that Kennedy would get reelected and Trafficante
replied, ‘no, Jose he is going to be hit’.”
Let me ask you, did you meet with Mr. Fonzi on that occasion?
Mr. Aleman. I met with Mr. Fonzi on that occasion. Now, after
the first article, when I talked all those things about trying to
315
remember, I had the doubt that Mr, Trafficante was in some way
trying to get Cubela from Cuba, he was trying to get other people,
and during that time, when that happened, Mr. Cubela, after I
talked to him many times to do something against the regime of
Castro, he didn’t do anything, and in some way he was trying to
bring this man, and that is why I brought to the point that these
things were happening and it was very important to pay attention
of the possibility of Castro being mixed with Santos Trafficante
because in Miami everybody talks that the Bolita is being paid,
used to be repaid to the G-2 agents by Santos Trafficante and G-2
agents in Cuba used to be, I mean in Miami used to be paid that
way, and I wanted for them to pay attention to this. That is the
main reason I brought all these.
Mr. Cornwell. What we would like to attempt to do first is to
determine, to the best of your memory, what the words were that
Trafficante used in this conversation, and the interview report
which we have just placed into evidence indicates that you did
specifically confirmed that, to the best of your memory, those were
the exact words, when you were interviewed in March 1977. Is that
report accurate?
Mr. Aleman. The report, I, again, will tell you, that I was trying
to recollect things from a long period of time and I was talking
about Castro maybe being involved with Cubela, with Papina
Ronjo, in a lot of things.
Mr. Cornwell. I understand that part. Specifically with respect
to the first paragraph where it states that you specifically con-
firmed that with respect to Kennedy, Trafficante stated, ''No, Jose,
he is going to be hit,” is that an accurate
Mr. Aleman. Because if this man was in Cuba, arrested, Santos
Trafficante, then Garcia Banjo, Cubela and all these people tried to
get him out of jail and he had connections with the Castro govern-
ment, there is no doubt that you have to pay attention to all this.
That’s the main reason why I am bringing this to the committee
because no doubt that at that very moment, Santos Trafficante, I
believe, has a lot of connections with the regime of Fidel Ceistro.
There’s no doubt about that in my mind.
Mr. Fithian. If the Chair could interrupt
Mr. Aleman. Even after some time I heard the opinion of a
Communist talking that he didn’t have nothing whatsoever.
Mr. Fithian. Will the witness suspend for just 1 minute?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Fithian. The Chair is informed, Mr. Aleman, that there is
an important vote on the floor and all members wanted to hear
what you had to say. So I am going to ask for a 10-minute recess.
Prior to that, however, the security service, the marshals, have
asked that all members of the audience and the press remain
seated and in place at this time until the witness is escorted from
the room. We would ask then that the witness and the marshals do
that at this time and then we will declare the recess.
[Mr. Aleman left the room with the marshals.]
Mr. Fithian. The committee will recess for 10 minutes.
[A brief recess was taken.]
Mr. Preyer [presiding]. The committee will come to order.
316
Let me remind everyone in the hearing room that the U.S.
marshal service has asked that all of you remain seated when the
witness is brought into the hearing room and when he leaves the
hearing room. We will ask that the witness be brought in at this
time, and we will ask everyone in the hearing room to remain
seated.
I understand that it may take about a minute for the witness to
be brought in.
[Mr. Aleman was escorted into the hearing room.]
Mr. Preyer, Would you have your seat, Mr. Aleman. Mr. Corn-
well is recognized.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Aleman.
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. Returning to the subject matter that we were
discussing with you before the break.
Mr. Aleman. I beg your pardon?
Mr. Cornwell. I say, returning to the same subject matter.
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you have any reason to believe that the
interview report of Mr. Fonzi is inaccurate?
Mr. Aleman. When you try to recollect for 15 years something, I
am trying to — it is impossible to — the wording is impossible to
reconstruct.
Mr. Cornwell. I meant to ask you though, do you have any
reason to believe that Mr. Fonzi did not accurately reflect in his
report what you said to him? Did he accurately write it down?
Mr. Aleman. It wasn't Mr. Fonzi, the one that wrote the article;
it was Mr. Crile.
Mr. Cornwell. Yes, sir, but the last exhibit was prepared by our
investigator Mr. Fonzi.
Mr. Aleman. OK.
Mr. Cornwell. Did Mr. Fonzi accurately write that
Mr. Aleman. I have to read it again in order to
Mr. Cornwell. May we show him the exhibit one more time.
This is JFK exhibit F-601.
Mr. Aleman. This is taken out of the article of the Washington
Post.
Mr. Cornwell. Yes, sir, in effect, it asks you if the article is
accurate, if you did say the things that are reported in the article.
Mr. Aleman. Yes, that's the reason why I asked for protection
for coming over here because at the time I was, later on after all
things had happened in the United States, very much worried. I
bring this to the attention of this committee that I had a puzzle
and I couldn't understand what was it. That's the main reason I
brought this to the committee.
Mr. Cornwell. Simply for the record, Mr. Chairman, let me ask
that JFK exhibit F-603 be entered into the record.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, JFK exhibit F-603 is admitted
into the record at this point.
317
JFK Exhibit F-603
MEMORANDUM
To: Bob Xanenbaum
From: Andy Purdy
Date: ^rch 14, 1977 -
Re: - Synopals of -3/10/7 7 trip (with Cliff Fenton) to Miami . -
Santos Traff leant e
Summary : Subpoena personally served on subject by Cliff
Fenton in presence of Sgt. Powers (Miami Dept, of Public Safety,
Organized Crime Bureau) and myself.; After mutual identification
S.X. asked us to place the subpoenas on a little bench just outside
the front door. He said he was accepting the subpoena. We walked
to the street and observed S.X. come out the front door and pick
up the materials and return with them to his house.
Aleman
Summary: Aleman confirms reports that S.X. personally told him
that President Kennedy was "...going to be hit." Aleman indicates
that S.X. made clear to him (implicitly) that he was not guessing
about the killing; rather he was giving the impression that he
knew Kennedy was going to be killed. Aleman did not believe S.X.
was personally Involved in whatever plan he seemed to know about.
Aleman is ready and willing to testify before the Select
Committee at any tine. He requests that we do not tell S.X. or
his associates about his cooperation with our investigation.
Santos Xrafficante - Information in police file
35-379 0 - 79 - 21
318
Aleman - 3f\2fn interview synopsis
Caeton Fonzi took detailed notes of the conversation between
Aleman, Cliff Fenton, Gaeton, and myself. This is simply a
synopsis of what occurred- Gaeton is preparing a detailed report -
Aleman was asked initially about a statement he reportedly
heard made by S-T- to the effect that Kennedy was going to be
assassinated. Aleman explicitly confirmed the version of the
conversation as reported by George Crile in the Washington Post
in May of 1976. He said the relevant conversation occurred during
one of a number of extended conversations he had with S.T. He
is not sure when the reported conversation occurred but he is
certain that it did. He said that he believes others were
present, including: S.T., himself, Kobregas , and Marco Antony
Hirigoyen (the addresses of the latter two he is trying to obtain
for us). His recollection of the conversation was as follows:
319
3 .
S.T. (trying to make Aleman realize that he was not saying Kennedy
would be defeated in the 1964 election, rather that he would not
make It to the election); you don’t understand rae. Kennedy’s
not going to make it tp the election. He is going to get hit-*'
Earlier In his first attempt to describe the circumstances
leading up to, and the substance of the comment, Aleman said that
S.T. talked of the many problems in the country and of Kennedy’s
role in causing problems generally and in specifically causing
problems for certain individuals. S.T. reportedly said that alot
of people weren’ t going to forget the problems Kennedy had caused
them. Including Hof fa. Gaeton, Cliff, and I are in agreement that
Aleman made no attempt to even infer that the Hoffa reference was
in any way connected to the statement that Kennedy was going to
be hit.
However, when asked to restate the substance of the conversation
and indicate the link if any to Hoffa, Aleman said he was given
the distinct impression that Hoffa was to be principally involved
in the elimination of Kennedy. Aleman says he never talked to
S.T. or Hoffa subsequent to this conversation or subsequent to
the assassination on this subject. Aleman says he had a bet
with Nobregas : concerning whether or not Kennedy would be assassinated
(Nobregas . betting ”yes*') but never collected his winnings or even
discussed the bet with Nobregas since then. ^
The relevant conversation came about when Nobregas intro-
duced Aleman to S.T. reportedly because Banco (a distant cousin
of Aleman) had helped get someone out of a Cuban jail. S.T.
said he wanted to help Aleman get out of his financial difficulties
in return. He offered to arrange a loan from the Teamsters.
320
4
S.T. wanted to atrange an Introduction with Orlando Bosch. Aleman
made this proposed introduction appear unrelated to S.T.’s offer
of help in arranging a Teamsters loan. At first he gave us the
impression that he took some action in arranging the introduction
which was accomplished by Niles- After persistent questioning
Aleman finally said that he did nothing to arrange the introduction.
He explained the situation this way: Npbregas was trying to help
out Aleman viz a viz S-T- by letting S.T. believe Aleman helped
arrange the introduction. The interesting thing is, according to
Aleman, (and contradicting the Post account) he never received
a dime from the Teamsters or anyone else.
Aleman attempted to explain why Nobregas and S.T. would have
contact with him, much less offer him assistance, in view of the
fact that Aleman had test if ed for the State in the Rothman trial
in Chicago. Aleman said he explicitly told S.T. of the fact
of his adverse testimony.. He said S.T. laughed out loud and said
not to Mforry about it, that it didn’t matter at all.
321
Mr. Cornwell. And may we show a copy of it to the witness,
please?
Mr. Aleman, on the front page of the exhibit there is a para-
graph which is titled “Summary'' and reads as follows:
Aleman confirms reports that Santos Trafficante personally told him that Presi-
dent Kennedy was going to be hit. Aleman indicates that Santos Trafficante made
clear to him implicitly that he was not guessing about the killing. Rather, he was
giving the impression that he knew Kennedy was going to be killed.
Mr. Aleman. No way. No way, whatsoever. You can be reas-
sured, that I always in my life fought for democracy,
Mr. Cornwell. I don't think you understood the paragraph
Mr. Aleman. Yes, but
Mr. Cornwell. We understand
Mr. Aleman. Rather than he was giving the impression that he
knew Kennedy was going to be killed.
Mr. Cornwell. That's what Santos Trafficante
Mr. Aleman. That he was not guessing about the killing.
Mr. Cornwell. That Trafficante was
Mr. Aleman. Aleman confirms the report that Santos personally
told him that President Kennedy was going to be hit.
Mr. Cornwell. Yes, sir. In other words, that's a recitation of
what Trafficante
Mr. Aleman. Aleman indicates that Santos Trafficante made
clear to him implicitly that he was not guessing about the killing,
Mr. Cornwell. He, meaning Trafficante, was not guessing, and
the second part again is not a reference to you, it is a reference
that you stated that he, meaning Trafficante, was giving the im-
pression —
Mr, Aleman. Let me tell to this committee the following thing:
By no way possible you can think that after all the suffering in
Cuba and all the struggle to put a democratic country, and after all
the struggle we've been fighting against Castro and after all the
problems that I can see that has come to our country, I, if, in any
way, I would have thought that the context at that time was that
something was going to happen in that respect, I would have
immediately advised the proper authorities about it.
Mr. Cornwell. And didn't you do so?
Mr. Aleman. I talked in some way to members of the FBI about
what was going on in the conversation, and I told them that
something wrong was in some way, the wording that Hoffa and
these — I went to the FBI and I informed something about that type
of conversation. Like I previously had been informing the FBI
about the meetings with Santos Trafficante.
Mr. Cornwell. And when Trafficante and
Mr. Aleman. Because when all these things were happening, I
was informing the FBI about that.
Mr. Cornwell. And I believe you previously told me that, is this
accurate, that you did specifically tell the FBI about the comments
of Trafficante on this occasion?
Mr. Aleman. We talked in some way, and whatever is about this
thing in the FBI files must be the exact thing because now I am
trying to recollect things that happened 15 years ago. You must
understand that.
Mr. Cornwell, What we want to do is
322
Mr. Aleman. So after so many years, trying to recollect what
went on, and that I had in some way a worry, I said what hap-
pened here, what transpired here, this is why I was bringing this.
Mr. Cornwell. The comments that were made to you by Traffi-
cante worred you, is that correct?
Mr. Aleman. After all the years that have passed by after seeing
all the things, it worried me.
Mr. Cornwell. In fact, immediately after the assassination, the
FBI came to you and asked you again about the previous comments
you had overheard, didn’t they?
Mr. Aleman. Whatever transpired during that period of time, I
informed the FBI about it.
Mr. Cornwell. They came to you after the assassination and
asked you again to tell in more detail the nature of the comments;
is that correct?
Mr. Aleman. They asked something in that concern.
Mr. Cornwell. In the previous reports of your recollections of
this event, as in your testimony today, the phrase has occurred
that '‘Kennedy will be hit.” Today you offered, for the first time,
an explanation that that might have been a reference to the fact
he will be hit
Mr. Aleman, No, no, no, no, because when that happened, I had
informed the FBI about it. So later on they told me, Jose, he was a
loner, you must not be concerned about anything, no problem
whatsoever.
Mr. Cornwell. The FBI said, don’t worry about these comments,
Lee Harvey Oswald was a loner.
Mr. Aleman. Yes; after the Warren Committee.
Mr. Cornwell. You offered the explanation, though, earlier in
your testimony today that the phrase, “he’s going to be hit,” might
have been understood by you to mean hit with a number of votes?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. That explanation appears in no prior report of
your statements that we have been able to find, and I would like
to, in that vein, direct your attention to yesterday.
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. You arrived at the airport from Miami, is that
correct?
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. My staff has reported that when they picked you
up, took you to the hotel
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Cornwell. You expressed alarm or concern that there was
no protection provided for you.
Mr. Aleman. Surely. I mean this article have been for a long
period of time. Undoubtedly, Santos Trafficante have seen it. I
think he came to the committee some time. Didn’t he come to the
committee? I am asking you that question.
Mr. Cornwell. They won’t let me answer that question. I’m
sorry. But at any rate, go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt.
Mr. Aleman. In reference to this. So all this time, I have been
very much worried, I am very much concerned about my safety.
After I brought this Washington Post, and that was about 2 years
and 3 months ago, and I have been worried. I sold my business, I
323
been in my home because I mean Santos Trafficante can try to do
anything at any moment. The DGI in Cuba tried to do something
to me and when I was called to come over here, I was subpenaed to
come over here, I was very much worried that I didn’t have the
protection, and I still believe that the DGI and Santos Trafficante
could try to do something to me. There’s no doubt about that.
The article was there. I wanted a reaction. Let’s see what the
reaction has been.
Mr. Cornwell. I have no further questions. Thank you.
Mr. Aleman. The reaction, you can see in the letter of Fidel
Castro, in the tapes that he brought to this committee, in the days
of suffering of Fidel Castro that he has been a few days very much
concerned and talking all the time about that he hasn’t done
anything whatsoever against the President of the United States.
And I don’t believe it. There is some connection between Santos
Trafficante and the Cuban Government. There’s no doubt about
that. I came very brave here to this committee to talk that I had
been concerned about this and you should pay attention, as pa-
tiently I have been with you people, and react.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you. I have no further questions.
Mr. Aleman. Thank you.
Mr. Preyer. The Chair recognizes Mr. Edgar for such time as he
may consume.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Aleman, I noticed
this morning you are accompanied by marshals.
Mr. Aleman. Yes.
Mr. Edgar. Would you indicate to the committee at whose re-
quest the marshal service has been provided?
Mr. Aleman. My request.
Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman, I had a number of questions that I
wanted to pose to this particular witness, and I have gone over
many of them last evening and have several pages of questions
that I would like to pursue with the witness, by in light of the
drastic change in his testimony which has been at least somewhat
apparent this morning and somewhat related to his feelings of fear,
I think that there would be little good served to ask those specific
questions at this time. And so I will yield back the balance of my
time and ask those questions at a later date,
Mr, Preyer. Are there any further questions from members of
the panel? Mr. Cornwell, any further questions from you?
Mr. Cornwell. No, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Preyer. Mr. Aleman, under the committee rules, every wit-
ness is entitled to take 5 minutes at the end of his testimony and
the questioning to make any statement that he may care to make
by way of clarifying his testimony or explaining it further or just
making any statement that you care to make. If there is anything
further you wish to say about this matter at this time, the Chair
will recognize you for 5 minutes.
Mr. Aleman. Thank you, sir, I don’t want to make no statement.
That’s all.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you, Mr. Aleman.
At this time, the committee will excuse Mr. Aleman. Let me
again caution everyone in the hearing room to remain seated as
Mr. Aleman is excorted from the hearing room.
324
Mr. Aleman, I would like to say to you, from the committee’s
knowledge of your background and despite anything you may have
said here today, the committee has respect for your background
and the bravery, the bravery you have shown in the past. We
appreciate you being here with us today.
Mr. Aleman. Thank you.
Mr. Preyer. If there is no — the Chair recognizes Mr. Blakey.
Mr. Blakey. Mr, Chairman, it would be appropriate at this time
to indicate for the record that the Cuban Government made availa-
ble to the committee a list of American gambling figures that were
held for possible deportation by the Cuban Government at about
the time that Mr. McWillie indicated that they were. And I would
ask that that be incorporated in the record as JFK F-410,
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, it is entered into the record at
this point.
[JFK exhibit F-410 was received in the record and follows:]
325
JFK Exhibit F-410
STATEMENT OF THE CUBAN GOVEENMENT
Jake Lansky was in Cuba from May 22, 1956.
Pino Vicente Cellini lived in Cuba frcm 1947. He was detained at
Tresconia Cairp in 1959. According to data obtained in those years he has
or had a sister working as a typist in the VJhite House who solicited the
aid of Senator George Shiathers of Florida to get Cellini out of Cuba.
From public sources we learned that George Smathers infonned the
Cellini family that he had spoken to Narcotics Ccmmissioner Anslinger
vto told him that his office had no derogatory information on Cellini.
In June 1959, according to our files, the Cuban Government received
a letter frcm the North American Consulate in Havana v^ch expressed that
there were arrest warrants for Jake Lansky and Dino Cellini in the U.S.
Both were freed. Both left Cuba subsequently but the exact d^>arture date
Santo Trafficante left Tresoonia in August 1959. We know he left
Cuba a few days after that. Unfortunately, we have found no documents
with his exact date of departure.
Lucien Rievard was devoted to drug trafficking. The Cuban govern-
ment does not loicw when he entered or departed Cuba.
Guiseppe di Georgio — The Cuban Government knows that he appeared
in Havana in June 1958 using a passport with the name Pierre Canavese.
Vfe do not knew what date he left Cuba.
Charles Tourine , Jr. , was known as Charles del Monico and Charles
White. He was closely associated to his father, Charles Tourine, aka
Charles White and Charles (the Blade) . He entered Cuba on February 20,
1958. The Cuban Goverrment does not knew when he left Cuba. He was
326
involved in gambling and drug trafficking.
In the cases of Charles Tourine, Jr., and Lucien Rievard, both were
thrown out of Cuba in 1959. The Cuban Govermvent could not determine the
exact dates of departure,
Joseph MerOla ■ — The Cuban govemrnent does not knew when he entered
or left Cuba. IXiring Batistans dictatorship he was closely associated
to RDberto Fernandez Miranda (>ho was the brother-in-law of Batista) in
a machine installation business throughout Cuba,
Henry Saavedra entered Cuba on February 10, 1957. He was freed the
sane day as Santo Trafficante. The Cuban Government does not know when he
left Cuba.
Babe Baron — The Cuban Government has no records on this individual.
Further investigation is in progress.
Charles del Monioo is Chaurles Tourine, Jr. In our files we have no
record that Charles Tourine, Sr., was ever in Cuba.
Mr. Blakey. I would also note, Mr. Chairman, as you are fully
aware of, when the committee was in Havana on August 26, 1978,
the Cuban Government made available to the committee, ironically
in the Hotel Rivera, an individual who was involved in setting up
and operating the Trescornia camp. His testimony was taken at
that time by the committee staff and yourself. It would be appro-
priate to enter that in the record at this time as well,
Mr. Preyer, Without objection, his statement will be admitted
into the record.
Mr. Blakey. JFK F-311.
Mr. Preyer. JFK F-311. It is ordered admitted into the record.
[JFK exhibit F-311 was admitted into the record and follows:]
327
JFK Exhibit F-311
KENNEDY
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS
Kame Jose Verdacia Date Aug. 26, 1978 3:15 pi
Address Hotel Rivera Place Hotel •
Havana, Cuba
Interview:
Blakey :
Corterez :
Blakey;
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia;
Let me indicate for the record that it is August
26th and it is 3:30 p.m. and the place is the
Hotel Rivera in Havana, Cuba. The people present
from the American delegation are: Congressman
Richard Preyer, G, Robert Blakey, and Edwin
Lopez. Would you identify for the record those
from the Cuban delegation?
Senen Buergo from the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Felipe Villa, of ficial from the Minister of
Interior, Ricardo Escartin from Foreign Service
Juanita Vera, Interpreter, Aramis Gutierrez, official
on the Minister of Interior.
We have then your permission to record this
conversation?
Yes you do.
Would you state for the record your full name?
Jose Verdacia Verdecift.
Interviewer Signature
Typed Signature Robert Blakey, Edwin Lopez
Sept. 27. 1978
By:
Form
328
Interview:
Blakey :
Verdacia ;
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia ;
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Jose Verdacia
Page 2
Would you state your date and place of birth.
I was born in Mancinilla Oriental Province on
July 20, 1914.
Are you presently employed?
Yes I am.
Where?
In the Customs - Havana.
Let me direct your attention to 1959. Were you
employed then?
Yes I did.
Where?
In the Immigration Camp at Trescornia.
What was you position there?
I was a Captain of the Police, the Chief of the
Camp .
Would you describe for us what Trescornia looked like?
Trescornia Camp is located in Casa Blanca, a
neighborhood in Havana facing the bay — Havana Bay.
The camp is constituted by pavillions. There the
passangers, for one reason or the other stayed
here and their boats left, they would be taken to
e
that camp. Those passangers would go to that camp
until the Navy companies would demand them or would
book them in another boat.
How large was the camp physically?
329
Interview: Jose Verdacia
Page 3
Verdacia:
Blakey ;
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia:
About one and one-half square kilometers.
How many sections did it have in it?
The camp was divided into eight large
pavillions, each devoted to the crew members.
Four smaller pavillions — out of this the first
one was devoted to the passengers who for any
reason — any problem with a visa, for instance
or maybe because they had come without the due
documentation-while the problem was solved they
were taken to the camp and stayed there. One or
two days, that depending on the solution of the
problem that had taken them there.
How many people would have been in each section?
At that time we had approximately 40 crew members
because at that time we had twenty-one crew members
of the Peruvian boat which had some problems in the
Cuban waters and it was drawn to the Bay so that —
and the crew was there at the camp waiting for the
boats problem to be solved. The rest of the crew
members were occasional people that remained after
their boat had left - because they just leave the
boat and then the boat leaves without them but they
stayed there for a shorter period of time. The
passengers were also occasional. Sometimes a
month would go by without having even one passenger.
This happened mainly with European passengers
330
Interview :
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia Page 4
who needed all other requirements in order to
be able to enter the country. Because I remember that
there was a treaty with France that the French did
not need a visa to come into the country. That's
why the passengers were very few. Now in the midst
of 1959 we had quite an amount of people who were
taken to the camp. Those people we did have know-
ledge that they were leaving Cuba temporarily and
that they were people who were in charge of the
casinos, gambling casinos. Those people I don't
remember exactly the amount of them that we had
nor the names of them. It is very likely that I
wouldn't recognize their face any longer, it was
such a long time ago that you can imagine. I do
remember some by their names because they have
been quite — their names have been quite known
later .
How many would there have been, fifteen, twenty?
I don't think there was that many.
If I were to give you some names do you think that
you might be able to recall whether this — that
individual was in Trescornia?
Well, I would be very grateful because that way I
could remember .
Would you recall a man named Jake Lanskey?
Yes I do.
331
Interview: Jose Verdacia
Page 5
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdaica:
Vfas he in the prison?
Not in that prison because it was not a
prison.
In that camp, I*m sorry.
The camp was under the Minister of State of
Cuba, There no prisoners were taken. There
the people that were under those circumstances,
I said before would be taken. Crew members whose
boat would have left or passengers that would not
be fitting the requirements in due time so they
would spend there some days til their problems
were solved. And these people were taken there
I think, that in order to have their problems
solved too before they left. There were no
prisoners there and we were not the kind of police
that takes care of public order, but just we were
policemen that took care of the order inside the
camp.
Do you recall a man named Charles Tour'ine?
Yes I do.
Do you recall a man named Lucien Ricuard?
It sounds familiar to me too.
Do you recall a man named Dina Cellini?
No.
Do you recall a man named Henry Civela?
No.
332
Interview:
Blakey ;
Verdacia :
Lopez :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Lopez :
Verdacia :
Blakey;
Lopez :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia
Page 6
po you recall a man named Loran Hall? .
No I don * t
Eugene Hall?
No.
Let me show you a book that*s called Photo
Identification book and direct your attention to a
photograph on the first three pages and see if you
can recall any of those.
I tell you honestly that it was such a long time
ago that I wouldn*t be able to identify him
and like that.
I understand but I have to ask the questions any
way. Let me direct your attention to photograph
No. 6. Does that individual look familiar?
No it doesn’t. I don’t remember having anyone
there with those — I don’t remember the name*
Sideburns.
Sideburns?
Let me ask you — this next individual, I do not
have his first name but his last name would be
Merola .
Joe.
Joe Merola.
I don’t remember. I don’t remember having seen
anyone like that there.
333
Interview;
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia :
Blakey;
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia Page 7
Do you recall — and then again I don’t have the
first name — Civello,
No.
Do you recall a Giuseppe di Giorgio?
No.
Do you recall a man named Charles Delmonico?
Yes I do, I do remember him.
Do you recall a man named Wilson Hudson?
John Wilson Hudson?
No, I don’t.
He would have been an English journalist.
I remember an English journalist who stayed
there for some days. He had been deported from
Argentina. I remember that he used to tell me
stories of his staying in Argentina. That he had
problems there with Peron because he used to
make funny stories about Rita Peron, Peron ’s
wife because there was soap by the name of Rita.
And he told me stories also about one of his
cronies which was issued in one of his British
papers that was around Queen Elizabeth. He said
that he had written that Queen Elizabeth could
handle 2,000 men. I remember the stories that
he used to tell me. I don't have any idea
of him . . , I don’t have any recollection of
him being linked to these other people. I don’t
remember whether he stayed there coincided with
35-379 0 - 79 - 22
334
Interview:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia :
Interpreter:
Verdicia :
Jose Verdacia
Page 8
the stay of these other people, I don*t know
his name but I do remember the man .
Were these other individuals all in the same
area or sections?
Yes they were.
Could Mr. Hudson have been in an adjourning
section?
No, All of them were taken to the same pavillion.
The first one facing the office. There was where
the passengers were taken and on that occasion
these men were there.
What areas would have adjoined the ones where
these other individuals would be that the British
journalist could have been in? My problem is
that I don't have a mental picture of what the
camp looks like so I don't understand how the
individuals were housed.
Let's assume that this is the camp.
The entrance to the camp would be this way.
Perhaps I could ask you to draw a map.
Yes I can.
Tape turned off.
It's on.
This is the entrance to Casa Blanca street. It's
the same highway which comes around here. It is
a bridge and that was the entrance into the camp.
335
Interview:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Jose Verdacia
Page 9
There we had a policeman at the entrance.
Was the bridge over water?
No. Another highway went under it.
Would you put an arrow on the map indicating
which direction was north?
Thank you. Would you explain to us how the
various individuals were housed in the various
villas?
This is the pavillion which was devoted to
passengers. This pavillion had individual rooms —
where the hall and then into their rooms on both
sides. The bathrooms were in this part. All these
pavillions had a cellar and then here in the cellar
they had a cafeteria. These are the stair case to
go up the pavillions and down on the cellars where
the cafeteria is. There the passengers were taken
and on that occasion these gentlemen that you
mentioned were taken to this place.
All of the individuals, Cellini and the others
were taken to the pavillion for passengers?
Yes they were.
Do you recall the individual from Argentina?
Yes.
Which pavillion was he found in?
336
Interview:
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Interpreter:
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia Page 10
In that same pavillion.
But you cannot remember whether he was there
at the same time? or before or after?
I don * t remember . I don * t remember whether
he was there before or after them.
Would you sign you name and date on the lower
left hand side of this map?
Do you want his name or his signature?
It*s doesn't matter. Thank you.
There was one additional name I wanted to give
you. Do you recall if Santo Trafficante was
in this pavillion?
Yes he was.
Let me show you a copy of a photograph provided
to us today by your government and ask you if
you if this is the individual who you knew as
Santo Trafficante.
Honestly, I can't tell you that I remember his
face. The name I remember perfectly well, but
the face I can't place it.
Let me show you a copy of Life magazine dated
Sept. 1, 1967, page 21 and show you the photograph
by Life "Trafficante Florida" and ask you if that
refreshes your recollection.
No I cannot identify the face. I cannot tell you
with certainty. I can tell you that the name is
perfectly clear. I am absolutely sure that he was
337
Interview:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia
Page 11
there, but the face I can*t recognize.
Can you recall the circumstances under which
Mr. Trafficante and the other individuals whose
names you remember came to be housed in the
pavillion for passengers?
Yes I do remember that. On that occasion many
people were taken there. People that I was
told they were the operators of the gambling
casinos. But all things I cannot tell you with
certainty because I did not have participation
in them. I can just tell you that I was the
head of police there responsible for the order
within the camp. Those people were taken there
in the same conditions as any other were taken
there and we had to take care of them - Keeping
them there til the immigration law determined that
they could leave, I cannot tell you exactly either
the dates that they spent there, whether it was
a month or over a month, but it was along that
time. But I knew that this people were individuals
in charge of gambling - of gambling house and
casinos here.
Were they free to come and go in the camp?
No not to enter and go out. The time they spent
there they had to stay in the camp until they Were
given permission to leave.
338
Interview: Jose Verdacia
Page 12
Blakey :
Verdacia ;
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Could they receive mail?
Yes they did receive correspondence, visits.
Did they have access to a telephone?
Yes they did. Yes, the crew members and the
passengers, all of them had the access to the
telephone.
How were they fed?
Their food was taken from the hotels to the
camp.
Did any of the individuals there have a private
chef?
No they did not. The food was taken to them
from hotels in a car. I knew the food came
from the hotels, I cannot tell you from what
hotel .
Was the food brought to them by virtue of your
activity or did they order their own food?
The camp had a standing room for those who wanted
to go and have lunch and dinner there. Yes. hm TKi’j
me- means that those who wanted to have dinner or
lunch of the place of the dining room of the camp
they could but those who received the food from
the hotels it was either because they had sent for
339
Interview:
Blakey ;
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey:
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia
Page 13
it before — previous arrangement with the hotel
or something like that, but not because they
can*t have arrangements.
The camp did not supply food to the people
being held there, is that correct?
Yes, The camp supplied the food for them but
in the dining room there. They had a dining room.
Were the people in the camp permitted to have
personal belongings?
Yes they were.
Did they have their watches with them?
Yes they had.
Rings?
No these kind of people like them — like the ones
you mentioned and the passengers — by the crew
people they were searched for a kind of knives
or things like that that could be used as weapons.
During the period that Mr. Trafficante was there,
did he ever seek his release in connection with
his daughter *s marriage?
I don’t know that because I didn’t have any authority
upon that.
Are you familiar with the circumstances that led
to Mr. Trafficante * s release?
No I don’t they were not of my competence.
340
Interview:
Blakey :
Verdacia;
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey:
Verdacia;
Blakey :
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia
Page 14
Do you recall about when he was released?
I cannot tell you with accuracy about the
date. It could have been in August but I
cannot tell you the date exactly.
You indicated that the passengers and the
gambling detainees were permitted to have
visitors?
Yes .
Is the name Lewis McWillie familiar to you?
No.
Is the name Jack Rubinstein familiar? Or
Jack Ruby?
No.
Let me direct your attention photograph No.
60 in the Photograph Indent, book.
I can’t tell you. I cannot take that face
back to that time .
Do you recall whether Santo Trafficante had
visitors?
If I tell you who received visits there I would
be lying. The visitors came. They talked with
one, two, three — any one of them. Sometimes
they talked together, sometimes they talked just
separately. But as they could receive visits we
had no reason to interfer with that.
341
Interview:
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
Blakey :
Verdacia ;
Blakey :
Preyer :
Verdacia:
Preyer:
Verdacia :
Preyer :
Verdacia:
Jose Verdacia
Page 15
Was there a visitors log book kept?
No we did not. Only those who came out to
the camp like the crew members, for instance,
were searched for weapons, nothing else.
Were all of the gambling detainees released
at about the same time?
Yes they were.
Did you learn what lead to their release?
No I did not.
I have no further questions, do you?
I wasn’t clear, how long was the gcimbling
detainees there approximately?
Approximately a month.
Did Trafficante cause any difficulty or make
requests that were unusual or do anything that
particularly called your attention to him?
No he did not.
One other question — On the British journalist
v/ho visited Argentina, you indicated that you didn’t
think he had met with the gambling detainees and
I wasn’t clear whether that was because he was not
there at the same time or because he was in a
different section of the building.
I meant that I cannot tell you with accuracy that
he stayed at the same time that the other people
were there — that the ones you mentioned. I don’t
342
Interview: Jose Verdacia
Page 16
Preyer :
Verdacia :
Preyer :
Verdacia :
Preyer :
Verdacia :
Preyer :
Blakey :
Verdacia :
even know what was the reason for this man being
taken into the camp. If it was because of this
paper or something like that, I don't know. The
direction and administration of immigration was
in charge of this problem. I had nothing to do
with that.
You told us that this was not a prison^
Of course not.
Was there any kind of security?
We had no security personnel but rather policeman.
We had three post, one at the entrance at the gate,
another one at another place and one behind the
pavillion in which the crew members were located
because the crew members were the ones that would
try mostly to leave the camp unseen — and then there
was a sergeant in charge of these post. There was
a boulevard there and they could walk along the gardens
and the boulevard in the days and talk and do anything*
Was there a fence around the entire...
Yes there was a fence,
I have no further questions.
I have no other questions at this time and for
the record let me indicate that it 4:15. Would
you object if I took your photograph to perserve
it for our records in connection with your testimony?
I have no objections.
343
Interview: Jose Verdacia
Interpreter: He doesn't want his picture taken.
Blakey: Let me thank him for coming and speaking with
us and sharing with us your memory. I am sure
it has been very difficult to go back that far
but we appreciate your — the helpful way in which
you have clarified what the camp looked like and
who was held there andLJthe very circumstances
sourrounding these matters.
Mr. Blakey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Preyer. The committee will adjourn until 2 o^clock this
afternoon.
[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m. the Select Committee on Assassina-
tions recessed, to reconvene at 2 p.m. the same day.]
Afternoon Session
Mr. Preyer [now presiding]. The committee will come to order.
I regret that the chairman of the committee has been called
before the House /Senate Foreign Operations Conference Commit-
tee at 2 o'clock today. The chairman was to do the questioning of
the next witness. He anticipates that this conference, his appear-
ance there will not take longer than an hour, so that at this time,
the committee will stand in recess until 3:30 this afternoon when I
hope he will be here and we will be able to resume.
The committee stands in recess until 3:30 this afternoon.
[A recess was taken until 3:30 p.m.]
Mr. Preyer [3:44 p.m.]. We are getting word, which we think we
will get momentarily, as to Mr. Stokes availability and we will let
you know as soon as we learn something.
Mr. Preyer [4:30 p.m.]. The chairman has finished his activities
with the conference committee so that as soon as this pending vote
on the floor is dealt with, we will resume. I think that will be in
about 10 or 15 minutes. We will go into session then.
Mr. Preyer [5:10 p.m.]. The committee will come to order.
The Chair recognizes Chairman Stokes.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I think it appropriate in light of the fact that at
the time we adjourned this morning, the chair announced that the
committee would again meet at 2 p.m. this afternoon. In addition
to duties and responsibilities I have on this committee, I happen to
be a member of the Appropriations Committee of the House, and a
House/Senate conference started at 2 p.m. this afternoon and at
the request of the President, relating to an item he was particular-
ly concerned about in that appropriations bill, I was asked to be
344
there to be present in order to contribute to that House/Senate
conference.
I was in that House/Senate conference from 2 this afternoon
until 5 p.m. this afternoon at which time I immediately came back
to this hearing room. We were then ready to recommence the
hearings and we have just been advised that the witness, who has a
physical condition, has advised the committee that he would prefer
not to be called this evening, because he has waited all day to be
called as a witness, and because of the physical condition, does not
feel that he can at this time come before the committee and has
requested that we have the hearing first thing tomorrow morning,
and he be called at that time.
Accordingly, the committee feels this request should be granted
and, Mr. Chairman, it would be appropriate for you to adjourn this
meeting then until the time set for tomorrow morning.
Mr. Preyer. The committee will stand adjourned until 8:30 to-
morrow morning.
[Whereupon, at 5:13 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to recon-
vene at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, September 28, 1978.]
INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1978
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on Assassinations,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met at 8:45 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 345,
Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Richardson Preyer, presiding.
Present: Representatives Preyer, Stokes, Dodd, Fithian, Ford,
Edgar, Devine, McKinney, and Sawyer.
Also present: G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel; G. Cornwell,
deputy chief counsel; Elizabeth Berning, chief clerk; and I. Charles
Mathews, special counsel.
Mr. Preyer. The committee will come to order. The Chair recog-
nizes Mr. Blakey.
Mr. Blakey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
What the committee witnessed here yesterday is more typical of
organized crime investigations than we had thought perhaps the
testimony would be. Skillful interrogation has, in fact, elicited only
meager amounts of information, and we have seen manifested in a
witness that fear that is all too often characteristic of people called
to testify in matters touching on organized crime. A fear that,
frankly must be recognized as justified. Indeed, I would note that
in the organized crime and racketeering section in the U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice between 1961 and 1965, in which I served, more
than 25 informants were lost in organized crime cases, killed by
those who would prevent their testimony from being made public.
But it is necessary, nevertheless, to continue the exploration and
illustration of the committee's work. In that context, it would be
appropriate at this time to call Santos Trafficante.
Mr. Chairman, I understand Mr. Trafficante has requested that
there be no radio, TV, photographs, or recordings made of him at
any time during his testimony. Consequently, it would be appropri-
ate consistent with the rules of this committee and the House to
enter an order to that effect.
Mr. Preyer. The witness, having requested that he not be sub-
jected to radio, television, or photographic coverage, the committee
directs that all lenses be covered and that all microphones used for
coverage be turned off at this time.
The committee calls Santos Trafficante.
Mr. Trafficante, will you stand and be sworn.
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give this commit-
tee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so
help you God.
( 345 )
346
Mr. Trafficante. I do.
TESTIMONY OF SANTOS TRAFFICANTE
Mr. Preyer. Thank you.
Mr. Gonzalez. Mr. Chairman, I am Henry Gonzalez. I don’t
know if the committee has been advised, we are exercising our
rights under rule No. 6 of the House Rules.
Mr. Preyer. Yes, Mr. Gonzalez. The Chair will recognize Mr.
Stokes for questioning, and I believe the matters you mentioned
will be brought out in due course.
Chairman Stokes. For the record, will the witness please state
his full name.
Mr. Trafficante. Santos Trafficante.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, where are you currently
living?
Mr. Trafficante. 740 Northeast, 155th Street, North Miami.
Chairman Stokes. Will you tell us when and where you were
born?
Mr. Trafficante. At this time, I want to exercise my privilege
and my constitutional right to take the Fifth amendment.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Chairman, I request that you have the
clerk show the witness JFK exhibit No. F-411, an order of Judge
Gasch conferring immunity upon the witness and compelling his
testimony.
Mr. Preyer. Yes; Mr. Trafficante, the committee has determined
earlier that it desires to immunize your testimony, and the clerk is
directed at this time to show the witness a certified copy of the
immunity order of Judge Gasch, and it is ordered inserted into the
record at this point, JFK F-411.
[The Immunity Order, JFK F-411 follows:]
347
JFK Exhibit F-411
filed
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT ^
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA «-!:. ' C 1973
JAMES F. DAVEY, Ck
In the Matter of the Application of
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS
ORDER
CONFERRING IMMUNITY UPON AND
COMPELLING TESTIMONY FROM SANTO TRAFFICANTE
The United States House of Representatives Select
Committee on Assassinations having made written application,
pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Sections 6002 and
6005, for an order conferring immunity upon Santo Trafficante
and compelling him to testify and provide other information
before the Select Committee on Assassinations, and the court
finding that all procedures specified by §6005 have been
duly followed, it is hereby, this day of^
1978,
ORDERED, that Santo Trafficante in accordance with
the provisions of Title 18, United States Code, Sections
6002 and 6005, shall not be excused from testifying or pro-
viding other information before the Select Committee on
Assassinations on the grounds that the testimony or other
information sought may tend to incriminate him.
ORDERED FURTHER, that Santo Trafficante appear when
subpoenaed by said Committee and testify and provide such other
information that is sought with respect to matters under inquiry
by said Committee.
348
AND IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that no testimony or other
information compelled under this order (or any information
directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other
information) may be used against Santo Trafficante in any
criminal case, except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false
statement or otherwise failing to comply with this ORDER.
United States District Judge
Dated:
^ A THL'E COPY
Mr. Preyer. I believe, Mr. Trafficante, and Mr. Gonzalez, that
you have seen a copy of this order at an earlier date.
Mr. Gonzalez. That's correct, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Preyer. In light of the immunity order, the committee di-
rects you to answer the question, Mr. Trafficante.
Mr. Gonzalez. Mr. Chairman, prior to answering any of the
questions propounded, we would like to have the declaration made
by counsel for the committee on behalf of the committee whether
or not any of the questions that will be propounded to Mr. Traffi-
cante are derived from either legal or illegal monitoring of Mr.
Trafficante at any time in the past, and we would exercise that
right and make that request under title 18, section 3504.
Mr. Preyer. The Chair will state, Mr. Gonzalez, that no question
you will be asked in this hearing today is based on any electronic
surveillance, as to which you have standing to object,
Mr. Gonzalez. Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, I would like, prior
to commencement of questioning, I believe it was either yesterday
or the day before I submitted a document from a doctor which I
would most respectfully ask that it be incorporated as part of the
record and each of the committee members take consideration and
do take consideration of the contents therein in the conducting of
the hearing at this time.
Mr. Preyer. Mr. Gonzalez, each member of the committee has
received a copy of this letter and has read it and, without objection,
a copy of the letter will be made a part of the record at this point.
[The referred to document furnished for the record follows:]
349
Noverdber 23, 19/7
T? WHOM
In re: Mr. Santo Trafficante
W^atson Clinic rl79243
The abovo-mentioned patient has been under my care since 1969. he
has had chronic hypertensive vascular disease, his first evidence
of organic heart disease was in August, 1974, when he had the onset
in another country of pulmonary edema. The electrocardiogram changed
and showed evidence of anterior well ischemia. It was felt that he
had had a myocardial infarction at that time. He has had chronically
elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as temporary elevations
cf uric acid which have been controlled by medication. He has also
y .id a polyp removed from his colon which was benign but required
abior.inal surgerv in 1971. He ha 1 a retinal detachment in 1974 and
has rather severe and disabling osteoarthritis of the iumbcsacral
spine .
Currently, he is suffering from angina pectoris on either exposure
to tension or to exertion. He was evaluated in the clinic by Dr.
.Alan Brenner, Cardiologist, who agreed with his management program
which consists of Aldomet 500 mg. b.i.d., Inderal 40 mg. q.i.d.,
Col-Benemid - one tablet twice daily, potassium supplements, Hydro-
Diuril 50 mg. daily, and Apresoline 10 mg. t.i.d. He recommended
the addition of Isordil and he now receives 5 mg. sublingually q.i.d.
For his arthritis, he has been given Tolectin, two tablets t.i.d.
In essence, Mr. Trafficante is an ill man and has significant cardio-
vascular disease, making him at great risk for a recurrence of myo-
cardial infarction. His angina is brought on by stressful events,
either physical or emotional.
It would seem unwise for him to be exposed to prolonged emotional
or physical stress. For this reason, it would be better if his
current legal difficulties could be handled by deposition rather
than having to undergo the more stressful personal appearances.
John V. Verner, Jr.. M.D.
sr(w30)73
K- HP
JFK Exhibit F-412
35-379
O
23
350
Mr. Devine. Reserving the right to object, does the Chair make
the reference to the letter from a clinic dated September 1977?
Mr. Gonzalez. No, sir, it is November 23, 1977.
Mr. Devine. 1977. That is the one. I withdraw my reservation,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gonzalez. Mr. Chairman, pursuant to the subpena that Mr.
Trafficante is here responding to of this committee, pursuant to the
order of the Federal district judge here in this area and we at this
time are prepared to continue the questioning.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez. Before we continue with
the questioning, the Chair would like to read to the witness a
statement of the scope of the hearing which appears as the man-
date of this committee in H, Res. 222.
The select committee or a subcommittee thereof is authorized and directed to
conduct a full and complete investigation and study of the circumstances surround-
ing the assassination and death of President John F. Kennedy and the assassination
and death of Martin Luther King, and of any other persons the select committee
shall determine might be related to either death in order to ascertain (1) whether
the existing laws of the United States, including but not limited to laws relating to
the safety and protection of the President of the United States, assassinations of the
President of the United States, deprivation of civil rights and conspiracies related
thereto, as well as the investigatory jurisdiction and capability of agencies and
departments of the U.S. (government are adequate either in their provisions or in
the manner of their enforcement and, (2) whether there was full disclosure and
sharing of information and evidence among agencies and departments of the U.S.
Government during the course of all prior investigations into those deaths, and
whether any evidence or information which was not in the possession of any agency
or department of the U.S. Government investigating either death would have been
of assistance to that agency or department, and why such information was not
provided to or collected by the appropriate agency or department and shall make
recommendations to the House, if the select committee deems it appropriate for the
amendment of existing legislation or the enactment of new legislation.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Stokes to begin the questioning. Pro-
ceed with the questioning at this time.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you Mr. Chairman,
Mr. Trafficante, I believe at the point you interjected your
motion, I had asked you to tell us when and where you were born.
Mr. Trafficante. Tampa, Fla., November 15, 1914.
Chairman Stokes. What is your current occupation?
Mr. Trafficante. I am retired.
Chairman Stokes. During the period 1957 and 1958, where were
you living?
Mr. Trafficante. In Havana, Cuba.
Chairman Stokes. Could you tell us when you moved to Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. Around 1953 or 1954, in the latter part of 1953
or 1954,
Chairman Stokes. Now, during 1959, did you travel between the
United States and Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. I don’t think I did. Maybe. In the latter part of
1959, I might have.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us what business or employment
you had while you were in Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. I was in the gambling business and nightclub
casino business, which was legal at that time in Cuba.
Chairman Stokes. Being in the business, did you own several
pieces of casinos in Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. I had some interests in some casinos.
351
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us how many?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, maybe three or four.
Chairman Stokes. Did you have an interest in the Sans Souci?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. How about the Tropicana?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. Capri?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. Which were the others you had an interest in?
Mr. Trafficante. Deauville, the Commodore.
Chairman Stokes. In order to operate your casinos in 1957-58,
did you have to pay money to Cuban officials to maintain the
operation of your casinos?
Mr. Trafficante. We had to pay a license of $25,000 a year and
we had to give 50 percent of the take of the slot machines.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, do you know a Rafael Gener
while you were in Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. I didn’t get the name.
Chairman Stokes. Gener, Rafael Gener.
Mr. Trafficante. How do you spell it?
Chairman Stokes. I believe is it spelled G-e-n-e-r, but pronounced
Gener.
Mr. Trafficante. P-e-, you said.
Chairman Stokes. G, as in George. G-e-n-e-r, but is pronounced
Gener.
Mr. Trafficante. Gener, Macho Gener; yes, I knew a Gener by
that name.
Chairman Stokes. Did you meet him while in Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. I met him after the event of Fidel Castro. He
had been in exile before.
Chairman Stokes. This would be after the revolution?
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, did you know a Mr. Joseph
Stassi?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. How did you come to know him?
Mr. Trafficante. He was connected with me for a while in the
Sans Souci.
Chairman Stokes. What was his relationship to you?
Mr. Trafficante. He was a partner in the Sans Souci.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us in late 1958, what was the
result of the activities of Castro? How did it affect the tourist and
gambling business there in Havana?
Mr. Trafficante. You are talking about 1958 before Castro came
in?
Chairman Stokes. Before he came in, yes.
Mr. Trafficante. It wasn’t too good. Every other day they had
bombs and stuff like that. It was nothing.
Chairman Stokes. What effect did it have on the gambling busi-
ness? How did it affect your business?
Mr. Trafficante. Very bad.
Chairman Stokes. In what respect?
Mr. Trafficante. Because every day there were bombs put in
different spots and the first thing you know, even if there were a
352
couple bombs, before the night was over, there were 200, supposed-
ly, rumors, stuff flying around and people would stay home.
Chairman Stokes. I suppose that this then caused the casino
operators a great deal of concern, did it not?
Mr. Trafficante. I suppose so.
Chairman Stokes. And was there fear on the part of the opera-
tors that if Castro came to power that he would confiscate these
businesses?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. Was there anticipated at all that he might
come to power at that time?
Mr. Trafficante. Nobody ever dreamt that he would come to
power at that time.
Chairman Stokes. Did you or any of the other casino operators
take any steps to protect your businesses in the event that he
would come to power?
Mr. Trafficante. No. There was no question about him taking
to power. They used to — in the papers when you would read about
him, you would read like he was some kind of a bandit.
Chairman Stokes. Did you meet Fidel or Raoul Castro prior to
January 1, 1959?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. When Fidel Castro took over, how soon did he
order the casinos to be closed?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, even before he reached Havana, because
he didn't come down from the mountain until after Batista had
left, and he had a walkathon, you would call it, from the moun-
tains to Havana, and they kept interviewing him and he kept
saying the casinos would close, statements to that effect, the casi-
nos close without even being notified officially to close. Everything
was in a turmoil. There was people all over the streets, breaking
into homes, there was complete enmity and the only thing at that
time was to try and stay alive.
Chairman Stokes. What was his attitude toward casino owners
and operators?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, he did a lot of talking in those days. I
doubt if he knew what the hell he was talking about, but he used
to do a lot of talking against the Marines, the United States and
this and that. So nobody knew where you stood with him.
Chairman Stokes. About that time, did you have any reason to
contact Mr. Gener, whom we have referred to earlier, the gentle-
man we referred to earlier?
Mr. Trafficante. I think Mr. Gener contacted me, if my recol-
lection is right. In fact, I think it was looking to take over the
apartment that I used to live, because he thought it was a matter
of time before I would have to leave Cuba.
Chairman Stokes. After
Mr. Trafficante. That's how I got to meet him. I met him in my
own apartment, that in case, he said, if you leave, I would like to
have this apartment. So, I say, OK,
Chairman Stokes. After Castro came to power, did you continue
to operate your business as usual?
Mr. Trafficante. No, everything was closed but after 2, maybe 3
months, or 4 months or 5 months, I don't remember when, he
353
ordered all the casinos to open up again and when I said order, he
ordered it. You either had to open up or lose — or go to jail.
Chairman Stokes. And what did you do?
Mr. Trafficante. Well I stayed away from the Sans Souci, which
was a lemon. So I stood around there to see what would happen,
mostly to see he closed the door there. What he did was, he made
the casinos open and he obligated all the casinos owners to pay the
backpay of all these months that these people had not worked, and
as soon as they got the backpay, then he will find a reason to close
them, some of them, the ones he considered that were in the
middle district of the city or the poor district of the city.
Chairman Stokes. This would have meant then that anyone who
reopened would have to pay those employees about 3 months
wages; is that right?
Mr. Trafficante. About 3 or 4 months wages, yeah.
Chairman Stokes. Did a time come when you were detained or
imprisoned there in Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. And can you tell us when that was?
Mr. Trafficante. I cannot tell you the exact date, but the thing
was that I was detained, I was being — how would you call it [con-
ferred with counsel] — I got news that Cuban officials were looking
for me to put me in jail because one of the things was that I was a
Batista collaborator. They raided my apartment, they were looking
for money, they tore up all the furniture, they used to come and
get me at nighttime, take me out in the woods, trying to tell where
I had my money, this and that, until I finally went into hiding.
And they kept on and nobody knew what was going on.
I mean, these were a bunch of, most of them were 15, 16, 17,
years old. They had weapons, it was a bad time to be around there.
Chairman Stokes. Now, do the dates June 8 to August 18, 1959,
sound about the time that you were imprisoned?
Mr. Trafficante, Well, no, I was imprisoned on June the 21st. I
was there because one of my daughters got married on that day,
and I had been in jail before. I had been in jail, I would say, at
least a month or two. They let me out that day to go to the
wedding because the thing was that these people thought — when
they finally arrested me, they thought that I was being, that I was
wanted in the United States for all kinds of charges — narcotics,
there were this and that and when they check it out, they found
out nobody wanted me in the States. So then they had me in
Trescornia which was immigration center, and they didn't know
there for a while what to do with me. And I think that the reason
they later did not deport me was because the United States wanted
for them to deport me. So they figure, well, they said, this guy
cannot be because at that time everybody to them was a spy, was
this, was that.
Chairman Stokes. So it wasn't actually like a prison, was it?
Mr. Trafficante. No; it was not. We had it pretty good.
Mr. Preyer. You had it pretty good?
Mr. Trafficante. We had it pretty good. We had our own food
coming in and everything. It was like a big camp, like a big
concentration camp. We had our own room. It wasn't too bad.
354
Chairman Stokes. And can you give us some idea about how
many persons were being detained there at that time?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, they had two sides to this thing. They
had, most of this thing, a lot of these people entered Cuba with no
papers, especially sailors and people with no means of support.
They would put them on one side and people that they thought had
means of support that were not public charges, they would put
them on the other side.
I think at one time in our compound, you would call it, I think,
we got to be about seven or eight.
Chairman Stokes. Were those other seven or eight also casino
owners and operators?
Mr. Trafficante. Most of them were workers or casino owners.
Chairman Stokes, Did you know most of them?
Mr. Trafficante, Yes.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us who they were?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, for a time there, I would say for a day or
two there was Mr. Dino Cellini, Mr. Jake Lansky, and myself, a
fellow by the name of Chuck White, Guiseppe DiGeorge, and that
is about it.
Chairman Stokes. Now, had you known all of these people before
you went to the compound with them?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes sir. I found most of them there. Then in a
few days Mr. Lansky and Mr. Cellini, they were taken out and they
were freed, in other words, they weren't deported or nothing.
Chairman Stokes, Mr. Trafficante, did you contact anyone to
assist you in getting out of the detention center?
Mr. Trafficante. I had a lot of people come and see me trying to
help me to get out, and the attorney that I had was a fellow by the
name of Mr. Bango, and I think Mr. Gener was interested in
getting me out and a lot of other people that were in the casino
business, native people, like Mr. Fox and Mr. Petere and Mr.
Alfredo Gonzalez and Mr. Raoul Gonzalez. We had a good relation-
ship and they all tried their best to get me out.
Chairman Stokes, At the time you were released, were any of
the other casino operators or owners released with you?
Mr. Trafficante. Most of them had been released except this
fellow Guiseppe DiGeorge, who was deported to Italy. He was held
there for deportation to Italy because he was an Italian citizen.
Chairman Stokes. In order to effect your release, did you have to
pay any money?
Mr. Trafficante. No sir.
Chairman Stokes. Did Raoul Castro have anything to do with
your release?
Mr. Trafficante. I think he helped in my release.
Chairman Stokes. At least you have heard that' he di ’?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, no, I had a friend of mine by the name
of Raoul Gonzalez, who used to run the Hilton Hotel, where Raoul
Castro used to go very frequently, and he talked to him one day
about me, and the fellow says, well, I understand he is in the drug
business, and this fellow told him, if he is in the drug business then
you get me and shoot me against the wall because I can vouch for
him.
355
He says, well, you wait a while, I see what I can do about it. And
eventually, after a month or two, I was released.
Chairman Stokes. And after you were released, Mr. Trafficante,
how long did you remain in Havana?
Mr. Trafficante. I remained in Havana until, I am not sure
now, I had a case, I had a trial coming up in Jacksonville, Fla., on
a tax matter, so I came in for that trial, I believe it was the latter
part of 1959, the month of October or November, I don't remember
when. It lasted about 8 weeks. I was acquitted. Then I spent the
holidays, I think in Florida, then I went back to Havana.
Chairman Stokes. When you returned to Havana what was your
feeling about the climate there in terms of the economy and your
investment in the casino operations?
Mr. Trafficante. Very bad. I knew sooner or later I would have
to get out of there.
Chairman Stokes. After your release from prison, did you ever
meet Raoul or Fidel Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. I met Raoul Castro one time at the Hilton
Hotel. I happened to be there, in fact, and the same Raoul Gonza-
lez, he has told me if you want to thank him, he is upstairs, in
some kind of a place, some kind of a room there, like a public bar
or something, and so I went up there and he was going down the
stairs, so this fellow called to him and made him stop, and I went
there and I thanked him, and he said well, just behave and don't
give nothing to nobody, don't let nobody shake you down or noth-
ing like that, and just behave and you will be all right here, you
don’t have to leave, you don't have to go no place.
Chairman Stokes. This was Raoul you are talking about?
Mr. Trafficante. Raoul.
Fidel Castro, I used to see him practically every night in front of
the Hilton where he used to come in about 2 or 3 o’clock in the
morning, and the first thing you know there were — he liked to talk
to the people in the streets. First thing you know there were 400 or
500 people at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning and he would be talking
all night long and I used to watch him, too, with the rest of the
people. I never did talk to him, though.
Chairman Stokes. You never did talk with him?
Mr. Trafficante. No. And the only one that talked to him was,
while I was in jail, was my wife, who wanted to get permission for
me to go and see my daughter, if he would let me out of jail to give
my daughter away. She was supposed to be married.
Chairman Stokes. And he granted that request?
Mr. Trafficante. And he did. He granted the request with a lot
of protection and a lot of bodyguards, thinking I would run away,
or something, I don't know.
Chairman Stokes. After you got out of Trescornia, did you
reopen your casino business?
Mr. Trafficante. No, I didn't reopen. I stayed away from the
Sans Souci completely. The only thing that the Commodore was
still open and I had an interest in the Commodore and the Deau-
ville, he kept it open until all the workers were paid and then he
closed that, so anyhow, the thing was that the dollar started get-
ting stronger and the Cuban peso started getting weaker, and it
was cheap to live there and I knew people there and I felt comfort-
356
able there, as long as I didn’t see nothing out of the way, but the
further, the more time passed, I could see that I had to leave there,
there was nothing there for me, there was going to be trouble
there.
Everybody was getting arrested and nobody was safe, so around
the middle of 1960 I made out I was coming to the States for just a
visit and I never went back.
Chairman Stokes. Well, you had quite a bit of money invested in
your operations there, didn't you?
Mr. Trafficante. No; I wouldn't say I had too much money
invested.
Chairman Stokes. Did you do anything in terms of getting your
money out and getting it back to the States?
Mr. Trafficante. No, because at that time most of the money
that I had there was Cuban money and at the time that I left it
was worth about 10 to 1.
Chairman Stokes. That is 10
Mr. Trafficante. Ten pesos to $1.
Chairman Stokes. To $1. So you were suffering quite a loss then?
Mr. Trafficante. I wouldn't say I did. I was young, I had a good
time, and that was it. I chucked it off to experience.
Chairman Stokes. Are you familiar with what the other casino
operators did in terms of trying to get their investments out?
Mr. Trafficante. No, I am not.
Chairman Stokes. Now, after you returned to the States the last
time you referred to, when you left in the middle of 1960?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, I think around the middle of 1960,
Chairman Stokes. Then, of course, you never went back?
Mr. Trafficante. No sir.
Chairman Stokes. Now, you just said that in terms of your
investment you didn't feel that it was too much. Can you give us
some idea what you feel your loss was?
Mr. Trafficante. No, I can't give you no idea.
Chairman Stokes. Was it a little bit of money or a lot of money?
Mr. Trafficante. No, it wasn't no little bit and it wasn't too
much either.
Chairman Stokes. Well, are we talking about thousands of dol-
lars or millions of dollars?
Mr. Trafficante. You are talking about thousands.
Chairman Stokes. Well, when you consider all four of the places
in which you had an interest, would you say that collectively your
investment could have been over a million dollars?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. If I told you, Mr, Trafficante, that Mr. Ricardo
Escartene, who is the current Cuban Consul and First Secretary in
Washington, told the committee that their records indicate, for
example, that the net profit of the Riviera Hotel was $25 million in
1958, would you say that was a true statement?
Mr. Trafficante. I coulSn't tell you because I didn't have noth-
ing to do with the Riviera Hotel.
Chairman Stokes, When you left Cuba, where did you next live?
Mr. Trafficante. I lived in Miami.
357
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, when was the first time you
were ever approached by any individual who was affiliated with or
working for the Central Intelligence Agency?
Mr. Trafficante. It was around either the latter part of 1960, or
first part of 1961.
Chairman Stokes. And can you tell us who was the person who
first contacted you?
Mr. Trafficante. Mr. John Roselli.
Chairman Stokes. And where did he approach you?
Mr. Trafficante. I think we were in the Fontainebleau Hotel.
Chairman Stokes. And can you give us the date?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. Can you approximate the time?
Mr. Trafficante. I told you it was either the latter part of 1960
or first part of 1961.
Chairman Stokes. Did you know Mr. Roselli before that date?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, I had met him.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us how you knew him?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, at this moment I donT remember how I
met him but I knew him.
Chairman Stokes. And how long had you known him?
Mr. Trafficante. I would say about 15 years, 15-16 years.
Chairman Stokes. Now, had Mr. Roselli ever had any business
interests in Cuba?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. Over the period of time that you had known
him, how often had you and he come into contact?
Mr. Trafficante. Very few.
Chairman Stokes, Now, did he tell you how he came to be
affiliated with the CIA?
Mr. Trafficante, No.
Chairman Stokes. This first meeting was just between the two of
you?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, the first time, yes.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us the substance of the conversa-
tion you had with him?
Mr. Trafficante, Well, he told me that CIA and the United
States Government was involved in eliminating Castro. And if I
would happen, and if Mr. Gener, if Mr. Macho Gener, if I knew
about him, knew what kind of man he was. I told him I think he
was a good man, he was against Castro anyhow, and that is about
it.
Then he introduced me to Mr. Maheu, and then Mr. Giancana
came into the picture.
Chairman Stokes. Mr, who?
Mr. Trafficante. Giancana, Mr. Roselli wanted me to be more
or less an interpreter in the situation because he couldn’t speak
Spanish and I can speak Spanish fluently.
Chairman Stokes. How long after the first meeting you had with
Roselli did the second meeting occur with Maheu and then Gian-
cana?
Mr. Trafficante. They were all staying at the Fontainebleau
Hotel. It was a matter of days.
358
Chairman Stokes. What was your reaction to killing President
Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, at that time I think that it was a good
thing because he had established a communistic base 90 miles from
the United States and being that the Government of the United
States wanted it done, I go along with it, the same thing as a war, I
figure it was like a war.
Chairman Stokes. Now, obviously Mr. Roselli, in order to ap-
proach you and discuss this with you, trusted you, right?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. All in all, can you give us some idea about
how many meetings took place between the group?
Mr. Trafficante. Not too many, because just like I tell you, they
used me to be an interpreter and then we met Mr. Gener, then I
took him to a place where they met some Cubans who were very
active, supposedly leaders of the American-backed factions who
were in charge of trying to eliminate Castro through revolution or
any other way that they could, and I think I assisted a couple of
times and that is the only thing I can say about that.
Chairman Stokes. Well, since you were going to be the interpret-
er it would be necessary for you to be present at all of the meetings
in order to interpret the conversations, right?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, but after a couple of meetings they found
out that they could get along without me, I guess, and tl iey told me
they didn't need my services anymore, and that was the last that I,
when they told me that I backed off, I wasn't going to
Chairman Stokes. Now, what was the total time span that you
were involved in the discussions about killing Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. I can, I cannot, I couldn't be truthful with you.
I couldn't, I would say it would be a matter of about a month or
month and a half or two months. We are going back a long time
now. I used to see Maheu, I used to see Mr. Roselli, I used to see
Giancana at the Fontainebleau, but there was no discussion. I
might meet him at a bar or the lounge and have a drink or
something like that, but there would be no more discussions about
the Castro thing.
Chairman Stokes. When you would have these meetings about
assassinating Castro, would you have discussions about other
things, too?
Mr. Trafficante. Not that I remember.
Chairman Stokes. Was Sam Giancana in the Miami area all the
time that these meetings were taking place?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, he was, he was there.
Chairman Stokes. And what was
Mr. Trafficante. He might leave, I guess, and come back, or
something, but I think he was there most of the time.
Chairman Stokes. What was your connection with Sam Gian-
cana?
Mr. Trafficante. I happened to know Mr. Giancana. There was
no connection at all.
Chairman Stokes. How long had you known him?
Mr. Trafficante. Oh, I would say about 10 or 15 years, too.
Chairman Stokes. Was he fully aware of the plot to assassinate
Castro?
359
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. And exactly how did he become aware of it?
Mr. Trafficante. I don’t know. I don’t know how he became
aware, unless — I think it was through Mr. Roselli that brought him
in.
Chairman Stokes. And do you know what his role was supposed
to be in the assassination?
Mr. Trafficante. No, I don’t.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know if Giancana had directed Roselli
to contact you in regard to this operation?
Mr. Trafficante. I don’t know. Maybe he did. It could be
possible.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us why Roselli approached you?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I guess he knew I had been in Cuba, he
figured I had, I knew people there, he thought I could be of help, I
spoke the language, he didn’t, he had to deal with Cuban people. I
thought he figured he could trust me.
Chairman Stokes. When he came to you and talked about the
CIA, what did he say to you?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I can’t tell the exact words what he said
to me but more or less he was working for him and Mr. Maheu
were with the CIA and that they were working for the CIA and
that the United States Government wanted this thing done. That is
what he said to me.
Chairman Stokes. Did he say what his role or capacity was with
the CIA?
Mr. Trafficante. He made me understand he was an agent of
the CIA.
Chairman Stokes. Now, what was your total involvement to be
in the assassination plot?
Mr. Trafficante. My total involvement was to be the interpreter
between Mr. Roselli, Mr. Maheu, and these Cuban people that I
took them to. Mr. Gener suggested that we see, and that I remem-
ber driving them there maybe a couple of times.
Chairman Stokes. Driving them where?
Mr. Trafficante. To the home of this Cuban leader that was
supposed to be backed by the American Government in the attempt
to get rid of Castro.
Chairman Stokes. And what was Mr. Gener’s role to be?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, he made the introduction to everybody
with this gentleman.
Chairman Stokes. Who brought Gener into the operation?
Mr. Trafficante. How was that?
Chairman Stokes. Who brought Gener into the operation?
Mr. Trafficante. Roselli asked me about him and evidently he
had heard about Gener. I couldn’t tell you who brought him in but
I told him he was all right, I thought he was all right anyhow.
Chairman Stokes. Well, in light of the fact that you knew Gener
in Cuba, where you had business operations, and you have told us
that Roselli had no business operations in Cuba
Mr. Trafficante. That is right.
Chairman Stokes. How would Roselli come to know Gener?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, the only reason, the only way I can
figure out is that Gener was very active in the campaign against
360
Castro and Roselli was looking for people that were active in the
campaign against Castro, and some kind of way he heard about
them or they got together some kind of way.
Chairman Stokes. But the person who would have more knowl-
edge about Gener and others who were involved would be you, isn^t
that true?
Mr. Trafficante. I don't see why I should have been the only
one. He asked me about him before he talked to him, I think.
Chairman Stokes. OK.
Mr. Trafficante. And CIA probably knew about Gener and had
some connection with Gener and asked me something. I am telling
you the truth of what I know about it and how he came about and
how it came about, I don't know how, but it came about.
Chairman Stokes. At any rate, you told him Gener was okay?
Mr. Trafficante. That is right.
Chairman Stokes. Now, I want to make reference to a person
whom we will refer to in conversation as “Y". You know whom I
am talking about, don't you?
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. The reason we are using this is because this
person's name has not been declassified.
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. You understand that.
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. Prior to any questions on this point, I want to
state this: the Church Committee in their report, page 80, described
this particular person as quote “A leading figure in the Cuban
exile movement."
Now, when did you first meet "Y", Mr. Trafficante?
Mr. Trafficante. I met him through Mr. Gener when I took
Maheu and Mr. Roselli. I drove the car.
Chairman Stokes. You had not met him previously?
Mr. Trafficante. I had not met him previously. Maybe I had
seen him in Cuba but I had never met him or talked to him.
Chairman Stokes. Who brought Mr. 'T" into the plot?
Mr. Trafficante. Gener.
Chairman Stokes. What was Mr. ''Y's" role to be?
Mr. Trafficante, He was one of the leaders of the American
backed faction of the movement against Castro in the United
States. He was one of the top leaders.
Chairman Stokes. Did Mr. ‘"Y” speak both Spanish and English?
Mr. Trafficante. I doubt it, no. He spoke Spanish because I was
there, I interpreted for him, especially the first time.
Chairman Stokes. He was one of the persons for whom you
interpreted?
Mr. Trafficante. Right. He was the only person who I inter-
preted.
Chairrnan Stokes. Now, did Mr. “Y" ever ask you for assistance
in financing anti-Castro activities?
Mr. Trafficante. No. I haven' seen Mr. "Y" since a couple of
times, I ttink it was. I don't th ik it was more than two times,
could have been three, but I do/bt it. I haven’t seen him since
then.
361
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever ask Mr. “Y’' if he would be
interested in participating in this?
Mr. Trafficante. How was that?
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever ask Mr. ‘'Y’’ if he would be
willing to participate in this plot?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever tell Mr. ''Y” that you knew
people who would pay money to do away with Castro?
Mr. Trafficante, No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever offer Mr. “Y” assistance of any
type in conjunction with any anti-Castro activities that he was
engaged in?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever discuss with Mr. “Y'' who would
run the gambling businesses in Cuba in the event that Castro was
overturned?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. Now, it is your statement that at all times
your sole function was to interpret for this group?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Is that correct?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, I want to read a portion of a
declassified CIA Inspector GeneraFs report — 1967. I am reading at
pages 29 and 31 of that document:
* * * Roselli told [support chief] that Trafficante knew of a man high up in the
Cuban exile movement who might do the job. He identified him as [Mr. “Y"].
The report then goes on to say this:
Comment: Reports from the FBI suggest how Trafficante may have known of
[“Y'’]. On 21 December 1960, Bureau forwarded to the Agency a memorandum
reporting that efforts were being made by U.S. racketeers to finance anti-Castro
activities in hopes of securing gambling, prostitution, and dope monopolies in Cuba
in the event Castro was overthrown.
A report of January 18, 1961, also associated “Y'' with these
schemes.
The 1967 Inspector Generars report continues:
Trafficante approached [“Y”] and told him that he had clients who wanted to do
away with Castro and that they would pay big money for the job. “Y” is reported to
have been very receptive since it would mean that he would be able to buy his own
ships, arms and communications equipment.
Mr. Trafficante, having heard what the Inspector General of the
CIA had to say about your involvement, is your answer still the
same?
Mr. Trafficante. Absolutely the same.
Chairman Stokes, When you were asked to interpret for these
persons who were plotting, what method was discussed of how they
were going to eliminate Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. Any way, where they took a cannon, pills,
tanks, airplanes, anything.
Chairman Stokes. Was there discussion about poison pills?
Mr. Trafficante. There was discussion of pills; yes, sir. I am
telling you any kind of way that was possible to get rid of him.
There was not only one way, of the pills, any kind of way, pills
included.
362
Chairman Stokes. Let me confine my question at this point to
the pills. Who proposed the pills?
Mr. Trafficante. I know I didn't.
Chairman Stokes. My question was who did?
Mr. Trafficante. I don't know if it was Maheu or Roselli.
Chairman Stokes. And were the pills ever given to anyone?
Mr. Trafficante. I think they were but I don’t recall me being
present when they were.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us when and where the pills were
given to someone?
Mr. Trafficante. I don't recall me being present when the pills
were given.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us who was to administer the
pills to Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. The pills to Castro was supposed to be admin-
istrated by Mr. ''X”.
Chairman Stokes. Was any money discussed in conjunction with
this?
Mr. Trafficante. There was never no money discussed for none
of these activities in no way, shape or form in my presence.
Chairman Stokes. You mentioned all the different ways that
would be utilized to get rid of Castro. Did anyone ever supply any
of the arms or ammunition or the tanks or the airplanes to them
for that purpose?
Mr. Trafficante. I think I heard later, after this Bay of Pigs,
they still kept on sending arms and boats and explosives and stuff
like that, but I am not sure, I just heard that from Mr. Roselli.
Later on, years later.
Chairman Stokes. Now, I want to make reference to Mr. for
reasons that his name is also not declassified. You know whom I
am talking about?
Mr, Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. Now, I want to also make reference to the
fact, before I pose any questions, that the Church Committee in
their interim report at page 80, described this person as a Cuban
''official close to Castro, who may have received kickbacks from the
gambling interests."
Now, you do know Mr. "X"?
Mr. Trafficante. I think I have spoke to Mr. "X”, met him one
time in Havana.
Chairman Stokes. And what was your relationship to him?
Mr. Trafficante. I never did give him any money.
Chairman Stokes. Well, what relationship did you have after you
met him?
Mr. Trafficante. I didn't have no relationship with him. The
relationship was through Mr. Gener.
Chairman Stokes, What was Mr. "X's" involvement in these
plots?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I think he was going to take care of the
pills.
Chairman Stokes. To take care of the pills?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes,
Chairman Stokes. Do you know if Mr. "X" spoke both Spanish
and English?
363
Mr. Trafficante. No, I don’t. I know he is a professor so it is
possible that he spoke but Mr. “X” in this particular time was still
in Cuba though, he wasn’t in the United States.
Chairman Stokes. OK. You knew Mr. “X” from the time you
spent in Cuba, is that right?
Mr. Trafficante. I met him one time.
Chairman Stokes. I see.
Mr. Trafficante. I didn’t give him no money either.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, did you ever handle or carry
poison pills to be used in the assassination of Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir, absolutely not.
Chairman Stokes. Did Roselli every give you the poison pills?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Again, I want to read to you from the CIA
Inspector General’s report of 1967, pages 24 and 25:
(Comment: The gangsters may have had some influence on the choice of a means
of assassination. [Support Chief] says that in his very early discussions with the
gangsters or more precisely Maheu’s discussions with them, consideration was given
to possible ways of accomplishing the mission. Apparently the Agency had first
thought in terms of a typical gangland-style killing in which Castro would be
gunned down. Giancana was flatly opposed to the use of firearms. He said that no
one could be recruited to do the job because the chance of survival and escape would
be negligible. Giancana stated a preference for a lethal pill that could be put into
Castro's food or drink. Trafficante “Joe, the courier,” was in touch with a disaffect-
ed Cuba official with access to Castro and presumably of a sort that would enable
him to surreptitiously poison Castro * * * The gangsters said [“X”] had once been
in a position to receive kickbacks from the gambling interests, has since lost that
source of income and needed the money.)
Having heard what the Inspector General has said about this
operation, would you in any way change your testimony?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Reading further from the same report, Mr.
Trafficante, at page 27, late February-March 1961, “Roselli passed
the pills to Trafficante. Roselli reported to [Support Chief] that the
pills had been delivered [to ‘X’] in Cuba. ['X’] is understood to have
kept the pills for a couple of weeks before returning them. Accord-
ing to the gangsters, ['X’] got cold feet.”
Having heard this portion of the Inspector General’s report,
would you at this point change your testimony?
Mr. Trafficante. I did not give any pills to “X”. I did not give
any money to “X”, I didn’t see “X” any more since after I seen him
in Cuba that one time, and I didn’t receive no pills from Roselli,
and I don’t know what else to say about that.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, did you at any time receive
any money for your participation in this situation?
Mr. Trafficante. How was that, sir?
Chairman Stokes. Did you at any time receive any money from
anyone for your participation in the assassination
Mr. Trafficante. Not a penny, no way, shape or form.
Chairman Stokes. Tell us what 'your reason was for agreeing to
act as interpreter in this situation.
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I thought I was helping the U.S. Govern-
ment. That’s what my reason was. And as far as the gambling and
monopolies of this and that and all that trash about dope and
prostitution, that’s not true. If things were straightened out in
Cuba, I would liked to have gone back there. If I could gamble, I
364
would gamble; if I couldn't gamble, I wouldn’t gamble. But the
reason was that I thought that it was not right for the Communists
to have a base 90 miles from the United States. The same reason
when the First and the Second World War, they call you to go to
the draft board and sign up, I went and signed up. That’s the
reason. And we all like to make money.
Chairman Stokes. I don’t quite understand.
Mr. Trafficante. I mean, we all like to make money in case
there was a thing I was doing it for money, for this and for that,
about going back to Cuba and gamble and have casinos or cabarets,
stuff like that.
Chairman Stokes. In 1967, 1971, 1976, and 1977, those 4 years,
columnist Jack Anderson wrote about the CIA-Mafia plots and the
possibility that Castro decided to kill President Kennedy in retali-
ation. Mr. Anderson even contends in those articles that the same
persons involved in the CIA-Mafia attempts on Castro’s life were
recruited by Castro to kill President Kennedy.
The September 7, 1976 issue of the Washington Post contains one
of Mr. Anderson’s articles entitled, “Behind John F. Kennedy’s
Murder,” which fully explains Mr. Anderson’s position. I ask, Mr.
Chairman, that at this point this article be marked as JFK exhibit
F-409 and that it be entered into the record at this point.
Mr. Preyer. Without objection, the exhibit marked F-*409 is or-
dered into the record at this point.
[JFK F-409 was marked and entered into the record and follows:]
365
TKF Ti \sHINr.T n \ pn^T C19 I
Jack .\nder 50 n and Les Whitten
Behind John F. Kennedy’s Murder
cwbsttf Jots RomUi cvv
hjvt ukfQ th* Mcrrt cf U)» Jobs r.
Kennt^y » Imura n, ->r »iib bl21 to bu
d«2'±- K' vu bruuUy nurdercd 1
fr» »r«kj ifQ. bii bick^ up body
iz:o a:: oil drus ail dumped
latA Miami I Bjcayoe Bay.
Before be djed, RneUi bloied to i>
focures that be kse« «bo bad a^
raiffd Prnldeet Kermedy s murder.
It «u tbe same eosspiraun. be sug*
gered. »boa be bad recruited earlier
to kill Cubaa Premier Fidel Caatro
By BoseUi't Cfb7tic account, Cartro
learned ibt idecuty of tbe underworld
coctacu In Havana wbo bid been
trymr to knock bim cff. He believed,
not ii:c;etber « itboui bans, ttat Pre»
tden; Kennedy '*a 5 bebind tbe plot-
Tbe Cuban leader, as tbe supreme
irony, decided to turs tbe table* and
use tbe «me cro-*d lo arrange Ken-
nel;-'* assassin anen. according to
Rose’ii's Keaar.a. To save tbeu* skini.
ibe piocen lined up Lee Harvey Os-
wald b> puU tbe trUger.
Roietll could never be ptona^down
on tames or details. It »as also difO-
euU 10 aucss whether be koew what
be was uUsma about or whether be
cerely described wbat be thought
ttigbe have happened. Certainly there
i.« DO real evidence to rupport RoseUi's
story But there arc enougb curious
ctreurjunces to Rutify teUing it. Here
are tbe faKisatmg btgbbgbta.
Tbe ruggedly baadsome RoseUi. a
nambryaoi mobster wiui underworld
conucts in Havana, was recruited by
Ibe Central IcwUuence Arfftry la
I 960 10 assassinate Castro He bad ro
autbon;:-, however, over tbe under-
.world elecenti b Havana.
They were under tbe loo** control
of nbrtdai Mafia chjefun. Samn
Trafficantc. His gambling emerpnses
in Havana bad been closed down by-
Castro afier the 1959 revolutioc. In
fact Trafficante bad been lodged for a
period in a Cuban jai]. an indignity
that didn't endear Castro u him.
After Trafficante made 11 back to bis
Florida bi’ints. be Uft part of bis or*
ganiaadon bebind in Karaai. Some of
bis benebmen even managed to de-
velop coctacu In Castro s rnner circle.
T^eoe were the people RoseUi waited
to use to knock off Castro
But RoseUi dldn i ba-e tbe rature
Inside tbe Mafia u make tbe tecesu.'y
arrangeoenu w-,i!i Traffirante. So
RoseUj called is tJ pa tro 37 (hr Chi-
cago godfather Sam 'Momoi Cuncatu.
to deal with Trafficante.
.As RoseUi s associates tell it be per-
suaded Giancana that it would be to
their advanuge to wm tbe good w lu of
tbe CIA Convinced, Ctascana flew
down 10 Florida to make the prelo^
Once Cuoctna and Trafficante set It
up, RoseUi used tbe Hivaaa under-
world to plot Castro s demise. .At first,
they tried to plant poison pills, sup-
plied by the CLA in Castro s food. Tbe
piUs would have cade it appear that
be died of natural cause*. Ntben this
failed, snipers were dispatched to a
Havana rooftop. Tbey «err caugbc
The word reached Roselli that some
of the plotters had been tortured a.sd
that Castro had learned about the
whole operation.
Tbe CT.A called of.* the RoseUi opera-
tion In Marcb, but recruited a
Castro associate. Rolando Cubela. to
murder Castro.
In an impro.-rpru, t.’iree-fcotr inJe.--
v1ew wjin .Asioriited Press- reporter
Daniel Karker. Ckstro mdicated that
be knew about tbe auempii 03 gu life
and warned tbi; I 5 leai;n also
might not be safe. That wia Sept. 7.
1963.
According to RoseUi. Car.ro enlisted
the same uodeioworld *lnmeou wboci
be had caught plonbg against bln. |
Tbey .supposedly Cuban* front* ''
the oln Trafficaitie orsmiution.
Working with Cuban intehigeace. they
allegedly lined up ao ex-Marme fbar^
shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, who bad
been aatve ta tbe pro-Castro move-
ment.
.Accorduna to RoseDis version.
"Oswald may Save shot Kennedy or
may have aaed as a deco;- while oth-
ers ambushed bin from cesser ranee.
^^'hen Oswald was picked up. R-osetti
suggested, the underworld consptra-
ton feared be would- crack aad dis-
close Infonzutton that miahi lead to
them. This almon certainly would
have brought a mustve L'i. crack-
down On the Mafia.
So Jack Ruby was wdered to elms-
tnate Oswald, making H appear as an
a« of reprisal againM ibe President's
killer At least this is how Rgselli e.t-
ptamed the tragedy in Dallas.
Several key CLA officials bdleved
that Castro was behind the Kennedy
asaasiinaiion.
It has also bei'b enablubed that Jack
Ruby, indeed, bad been in Cuba and
bad connections in ihe Havana under-
world. One C1.A cable, dated Nn CR
1P63. reponed ibst -an .AmeriesD
gangster type named Ruby", had sb-
Ited Trafficante in bis Cuban pruoo.
JFK Exhibit F-409
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, I want to read to you just two
portions of the article I have just referred to, after which I will ask
for your comment.
According to Mr. Anderson and Mr. Whitten in this article, it
says:
Before he died, Roselli hinted to associates that he knew who had arranged
President Kennedy’s murder. It was the same conspirators, he suggested, whom he
had recruited earlier to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro.
By Roselli’s cryptic account, Castro learned the identity of the underworld con-
tacts in Havana who had been trying to knock him off. He believed, not altogether
without basis, that President Kennedy was behind the plot.
Then over in another section, it says:
According to Roselli, Castro enlisted the same underworld elements whom he had
caught plotting against him. They supposedly were Cubans from the old Trafficante
organization. Working with Cuban intelligence, they allegedly lined up an ex-
Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been active in the pro-Castro
movement.
According to Roselli’s version, Oswald may have shot Kennedy or may have acted
as a decoy while others ambushed him from closer range. When Oswald was picked
35-370 o - 70 - 2-1
366
up, Roselli suggested the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and dis-
close information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have
brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the Mafia.
So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald, making it appear as an act of
reprisal against the President’s killer. At least this is how Roselli explained the
tragedy in Dallas.
Mr. Trafficante, do you have any knowledge of that?
Mr. Trafficante. No knowledge whatsoever.
Chairman Stokes. Do you have any information concerning any
retaliatory action by Mr. Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you have any knowledge concerning how
this information could have been given to this columnist, Mr. An-
derson?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Did you and Mr. Roselli ever discuss any
retaliatory action by Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us when was the last time you
had seen Mr. Roselli prior to his death?
Mr. Trafficante. I would say 2, 3 weeks before his death.
Chairman Stokes. And where was that?
Mr. Trafficante. In Fort Lauderdale.
Chairman Stokes. Was anyone else present?
Mr. Trafficante. His sister and my wife.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us what you discussed?
Mr. Trafficante. Nothing. We met for and — that's it. I don't
remember what we discussed. We didn't discuss nothing about
Castro, that's for sure.
Chairman Stokes. I believe you told us that you had known Sam
Giancana for a long period of time.
Mr. Trafficante. I would say 10, 15 years. I had never had
nothing to do with Sam Giancana; no business relation or either
with Mr. Roselli. I never had no business relation with them
either.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Giancana, prior to his death, when was
the last time you had seen him?
Mr. Trafficante. I would say 12, 13 years, I didn’t see him for 12
or 13 years. I hadn't seen Mr. Roselli, I think, I seen him once from
1961 till the time that he moved to Florida with his sister, which
was about 2 years before he got killed, I just seen him one time
during that time.
Chairman Stokes. Mr, Trafficante, you have told us here today
that your motivation for participating in the assassination of Presi-
dent Castro was your patriotism, your love for this country and
your concerns about communism being 90 miles from our shores, is
that correct?
Mr. Trafficante, Right.
Chairman Stokes. Were you at all motivated by the events
which had taken place in Havana which caused you to lose your
business interests?
Mr. Trafficante. No. I have been a gambler all my life, and I'm
used to taking chances, and it is a matter of time, it is not a matter
of — it was forgotten. I doubt very much if it would have been the
same again after Batista was gone.
367
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever inform any other people of the
plot against Castro besides those who were involved in the actual
plot?
Mr. Trafficante. Not that I remember. I don’t think I did.
Chairman Stokes. What is your knowledge as to whether Castro
learned about the plot?
Mr. Trafficante. My knowledge about Castro learned about the
plot?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, whether he learned about it.
Mr. Trafficante. I can’t answer you that. I would be guessing. I
don’t know.
Chairman Stokes. Now, at any other times, were you either
directly or indirectly involved in assisting any anti-Castro groups
in their activities against Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. No, I wasn’t.
Chairman Stokes. Now, you have told us that you do know Mr.
Bango, he was your attorney?
Mr. Trafficante. Right?
Chairman Stokes. And how long a period of time was he your
attorney?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, he was for short period of time. While I
was in jail, while I was in Trescornia in Havana. His brother, his
brother is still — I don’t know if Mr. Bango is still alive, by the way,
but his brother is Minister of Sports in Cuba under Castro today
and that’s a very important job under the Communist system. You
know, he is in charge of the sports and the youth and the whole
bit.
Chairman Stokes. Did Mr. Bango ever represent you at any
other time?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you have any knowledge of Mr. Bango
traveling to Madrid, Spain, during the 1960’s?
Mr. Trafficante. Right, I went to visit him in Spain during the
1960’s.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us about when in the sixties it
was?
Mr. Trafficante. What part?
Chairman Stokes. What part of the 1960’s?
Mr. Trafficante. Around 1966 or 1967.
Chairman Stokes. Was this in Madrid?
Mr. Trafficante. Madrid, yeah.
Chairman Stokes. And what was your purpose of going there?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, he had a purpose of— he had a fighter,
some kind of a fighter that he was interested in promoting. And
then I felt like going to Madrid, and I just went over there.
Chairman Stokes. How long did you stay there?
Mr. Trafficante. I stayed there 10 days. When I got there, I got
met by the — I left from Miami — when I got there I got met by the
Spanish Secret Service or some kind of a service, and they had 12
people a day under surveillance. I was constantly under surveil-
lance from the minute I got there until the minute I left. They
would park even in front of my door in the hotel. So there was the
trip to Spain.
Chairman Stokes. I see.
368
Mr. Trafficante, do you know the person AMLASH, a Cuban
official involved in the CIA operation also called AMLASH which
was designed to kill Castro?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. We refer to this individual also as AMLASH.
During what years did you know AMLASH?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I actually met him after the revolution
in Cuba because he was, he had killed somebody there, some big
official of the Batista government so he went to the mountains.
And I met him after the revolution. When he come in, he was
made a commandante or general, whatever you want to call it.
Chairman Stokes. And after you met him, was a relationship
established between the two of you?
Mr. Trafficante. No, just a hello and goodby, and that's it.
Chairman Stokes. Did he ever represent your interests or assist
you in any manner?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know whether Castro was aware of the
AMLASH plot prior to President Kennedy's death?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know if AMLASH knew Mr, Bango?
Mr. Trafficante. Tm sure he did.
Chairman Stokes. And do you know the nature of their relation-
ship?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us whether or not you know
whether AMLASH traveled to Madrid, Spain in either 1964, 1965,
or 1966?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, what Tm going to tell you now is what I
read and, you know, its been coming out, so I don't know that he
traveled there or nothing. I found out later he had.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know for what purpose he went there?
Mr. Trafficante. What's that?
Chairman Stokes, Do you know for what purpose he went there
to Madrid?
Mr. Trafficante. He was some kind of a diplomat. He was of
stature enough to be able to travel to Madrid and Paris and all
those places. In my opinion, he was not a Communist. I never
believed that he was a Communist. I always believed sooner or
later he would react against Castro. But as far as me having any
knowledge or contact with him or my personal knowledge knowing
he used to travel back and forth, maybe Bango must have men-
tioned it to me or something like that, but I never did see him in
Paris, in Madrid or anyplace.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, after January 1, 1962, and
prior to November 22, 1963, did you have contacts with any Cuban
official concerning any business dealings?
Mr. Trafficante. 1962 to 1963?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, sir, from January 1962 to November of
1963.
Mr. Trafficante. Not that I remember. Cuban officials in Cuba,
you mean?
Chairman Stokes. Right, with Cuban officials in Cuba.
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
369
Chairman Stokes. The answer is no, sir; right?
Mr. Trafficante, Mr. Aleman stated that you paid Castro's G-2
agents in the Miami area. Have you ever given any aid or assist-
ance to individuals you know or suspected were working for Fidel
Castro after January 1, 1962, and prior to November 22, 1963?
Mr. Trafficante. Absolutely not; never.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Aleman also stated to this committee that
he has ''no doubt" that there is affiliation between the Castro
government and yourself.
Mr. Trafficante. There’s no affiliation whatsoever between
Castro government and myself. There never has been.
Chairman Stokes. Now, let us return for a moment to your
detention in Trescornia. I understand you to say your wife has
visited you there. Did any other persons visit you there?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, a lot of people visited me there, people
that I knew in Cuba.
Chairman Stokes. These would be friends of yours in Cuba who
visited with you during that time?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. Were most of them people that had some
involvement with you in the gambling operations?
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. When people visited with you, can you tell us
about that visiting room, would there be other people in that same
room, other visitors visiting detainees?
Mr. Trafficante. Let me tell you, Mr. Stokes, this was like a
camp. There was no — it was a minimum security place. They would
let anybody come in. They would let anybody stay with us until 12
o’clock at night. We would cook, we would have food brought in, we
would eat, we would drink and there would be, sometimes, the
guards would come and sit down with us and eat. Some meals it
was like one big happy family.
Chairman Stokes. It sounds like a resort area.
Mr. Trafficante. It was. I really had a rest then, if you want to
know the truth. I enjoyed it. It was the highest point in the whole
Havana area. You could see the whole city. It was cool, too, in the
evening.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know a Mr. Meyer Panitz?
Mr. Trafficante. Who?
Chairman Stokes. Meyer Panitz, P-a-n-i-t-z.
Mr. Gonzalez. Is that P-a-n-, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Stokes. Yes, Mr. Gonzalez, P-a-n-i-t-z. First name,
Meyer, M-e-y-e-r.
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir, it don’t ring a bell.
Chairman Stokes. You did know Pedro and Martin Fox?
Mr. Trafficante. Pedro Fox, yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know whether the Fox brothers or any
of the other operators tried to get their money out of Cuba during
this period of time?
Mr. Trafficante. All I know is that Mr. Martin Fox, who was
the owner of the Tropicana and one of the richest men in Cuba, he
died in the United States in the 1960’s, I think, and he died
completely broke. And Pedro Fox was working as a waiter and
maitre d’ in all the restaurants and hotels around Miami.
370
Chairman Stokes. If, during this period of time, any of these
operators were able to get their money out of Cuba, are you aware
of how they did it?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir. You see — can I explain something?
Chairman Stokes. Certainly, go ahead.
Mr. Trafficante. You see, everybody that was in business in
Cuba Castro started with the very, very rich and he knocked them
out of the box so everybody would say, well, maybe he won't touch
me. Then he started with the next in line. Meanwhile they still
trying to do business and eventually he did it in a real way, then
he would invite all the tourist agents and he was going to make a
big tourists campaign to bring the people from all over the world to
Cuba. He was going to do this, he was going to do that. The next
time — meanwhile, the employees of these places would be taking
over that business and they would run the business. And if you had
a little money in the cage, you couldn't even go near the cage to
get the money because they would report you right away.
So everybody got fooled to a certain point. Because if you remem-
ber, he didn't declare he was a Communist until about 1962, 1963,
some time like that — 1961 or 1962, So there wasn't too many people
that got the money out, unless they had it out.
Chairman Stokes. I see. Thank you.
Mr. Trafficante, did you know, while you were in Trescornia, a
Britisher named John Wilson Hutson, who was detained along with
you?
Mr, Trafficante. Let me tell you what used to happen. I vague-
ly remember some guy there that was kind of a little bit of a
screwball. I don't know if it's him or not. Because there used to be
all kinds of people they would bring into there; people that would
have difficulty with the traveling papers. In other words, they
would get at the airport, then they didn't have a ticket to leave the
country. So they would get them and bring them over there until
they got the problems straightened out and continuously we would
have different people coming in and out and staying for a few days
and then leaving; coming, staying. So it could be possible that he
was there, but if I was to see him now, I wouldn't remember none
of these people.
Chairman Stokes. Then if I understand you properly, you don't
remember this precise individual, but it is possible
Mr. Trafficante, Right; it's possible that he was there.
Chairman Stokes. Do you know a Lewis McWillie?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, sir, I seen him around Havana a lot.
Chairman Stokes. Can you recall when you first met him?
Mr. Trafficante. He was working at the Tropicana for Martin
Fox.
Chairman Stokes. Did you have any personal business dealings
with Lewis McWillie?
Mr. Trafficante. Never had no personal business dealings.
Chairman Stokes. Have you ever had occasion to talk with him?
Mr. Trafficante. Ever since Cuba, I think I seen him one time
in Vegas at his home. Somebody took me there, say I want to meet
somebody from Havana that you know just for a few minutes.
Chairman Stokes. During the period that you were detained at
Trescornia, do you recall seeing Lewis McWillie visiting out there?
371
Mr, Trafficante. I don’t recall it, but he might have come. He
might have.
Chairman Stokes. So if he was there visiting someone, you don’t
recall it?
Mr. Trafficante. That’s right, I don’t recall it. It is possible that
he did, but I don’t recall it.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, did you ever know a Jack
Ruby?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir, I never remember meeting Jack Ruby.
Chairman Stokes. Never remember meeting him?
Mr. Trafficante. No.
Chairman Stokes. Are you aware it has been alleged that Jack
Ruby visited with you while you were at Trescornia; have you
heard that?
Mr. Trafficante. I’ve heard that but I don’t remember him
visiting me either. There was no reason for this man to visit me. I
have never seen this man before. I have never been to Dallas; I
never had no contact with him. I don’t see why he was going to
come and visit me.
Chairman Stokes. Were you aware of any of the activities of a
Jack Ruby?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. When you first met McWillie, can you tell us
where that was?
Mr. Trafficante, I met him around Cuba someplace.
Chairman Stokes. I am sorry.
Mr. Trafficante. I met him around Cuba in a casino someplace.
Chairman Stokes. Did he ever visit you in your home, or did you
ever visit him in his home?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir, the only time I think was one time in
Vegas, like I told you I was there for a day or two in the 1960’s. He
was already working over there. And
Chairman Stokes. In Vegas?
Mr. Trafficante. Yeah, in Vegas. A fellow said he had already
married a Cuban girl, or something like that. I seen him there just
for a few minutes. That was the only time that I remember seeing
him since the Cuban days.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, I want to ask you a question
that is very important to this committee, and that is, did you have
any foreknowledge of the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. Trafficante. Absolutely not; no way.
Chairman Stokes. Had you ever known or had you ever heard
the name Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the day President Kennedy
was assassinated?
Mr. Trafficante. Never had in my life.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, I want to, move into another
area now of questioning. So that we put it in its proper context, I
want to refer to an article in Parade magazine dated January 21,
1962, called The untold story: our Government’s crackdown on
organized crime, written by Jack Anderson and I just want to read
two portions of the first page of what is a three-page article. The
first paragraph starts out saying, “Organized crime is under attack.
For the first time, the full forces of the Federal Government have
been thrown into the battle against it.”And then it goes on to make
372
further reference to organized crime and at page 2, it has the top
10 and in 10th position is Santos Trafflcante.
Now, Mr. Trafflcante, were you acquainted with the Justice De-
partment’s program during the 1960’s of physical surveillance
against particular individuals?
Mr. Trafficante. I was so acquainted with it that they lived
with me for about 15 years.
Chairman Stokes. That they lived with you for about 15 years?
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. I suppose when you say that, you mean the
term literally; is that right?
Mr. Trafficante. Right. Night and day.
Chairman Stokes. What type of surveillance were you under, do
you know?
Mr. Trafficante. All kinds, from the neighbors, from the hilltop,
from the trees, from the cars, everything, any kind you could think
of.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafflcante, do you know Carlos Marcello?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Tell us how you know him.
Mr. Trafficante. I know Carlos Marcello about 30 years. I met
him in New Orleans. My father had an operation there, and I met
him through my father, at the clinic, used to be the barracks in
those days.
Chairman Stokes. So over that period of time that you knew
him, what was your personal relationship with him?
Mr. Trafficante. Just friendship. No business, never had no
business dealings with him; no way, shape or form. I see him once
in a while when I go to New Orleans. He’s come to Miami, I think,
once to appear before a grand jury, I seen him there.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever have occasion to discuss with Mr.
Marcello the physical surveillance situation?
Mr, Trafficante. I probably have.
Chairman Stokes. Now, when I use the term ''intense physical
surveillance,” you know what I mean by that?
Mr. Trafficante. I know exactly what you mean.
Chairman Stokes. That’s the situation you described where they
lived with you day and night?
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. Now, can you tell us why they had you under
surveillance?
Mr. Trafficante. I don’t know, I guess they hoped to find out
this empire I am supposed to have, all these businesses that I am
supposed to have; all that big thing I am supposed to be.
Chairman Stokes. That is your understanding, that’s your full
understanding?
Mr. Trafficante. That’s my understanding of it, yeah.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever have any discussion with anyone
on how this surveillance could be stopped?
Mr. Trafficante. No. I don't think I did. I’m sure that it
couldn’t be stopped, and I doubt it could be stopped.
Chairman Stokes. I’m sorry, was that your full answer?
Mr. Trafficante. What was that?
Chairman Stokes. Was that your full answer?
373
Mr. Trafficante. Yeah, I don't think it can be stopped.
Chairman Stokes. Did you ever have any discussions with Mr.
Marcello regarding President Kennedy or Attorney General Robert
Kennedy?
Mr. Trafficante. I probably had it with him about Robert Ken-
nedy.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us what that conversation was?
Mr. Trafficante. The conversation was that Bobby Kennedy had
him deported illegally, put him on a plane with some marshals and
dumped him in Guatemala. That was the conversation.
Chairman Stokes. And by him, you are referring to Mr. Mar-
cello?
Mr. Trafficante. Mr. Marcello, right.
Chairman Stokes. Obviously then from what he said to you, he
was pretty upset about that?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I would be too, what happened to him
would happen to me.
Chairman Stokes. And is this what you said to him when the
two of you talked about it?
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. And you felt that Robert Kennedy had mis-
treated him?
Mr. Trafficante. I think so, I still think he mistreated him.
Chairman Stokes. Are you aware of any threats that Mr. Mar-
cello made against President Kennedy or Attorney General
Kennedy?
Mr. Trafficante. How was that, Mr. Stokes?
Chairman Stokes. As a result of these conversations you had
with Mr. Marcello, the fact that he was upset.
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. You were upset about it. Are you aware of
any threats made by Mr. Marcello against either President Kenne-
dy or Attorney General Kennedy?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir; no, no chance, no way.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Trafficante, do you know a man by the
name of Jose Aleman?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I met Mr. Aleman, I think it was two or
three times, perhaps.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us when you first met him?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, I met him. I don’t remember what year
it was. It was in the early sixties.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us where you first met him?
Mr. Trafficante. I met him at his — I think he had an apart-
ment house or condominium or hotel or something.
Chairman Stokes. And how did you happen to be at his home?
Mr. Trafficante. I met him through Macho Gener.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Gener took you there?
Mr. Trafficante. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. And can you tell us the purpose of his taking
you there?
Mr. Trafficante. This fellow was in a financial bind. Mr.
Aleman was having trouble financially. He wanted to raise some
money because he was having trouble with his stepmother or some-
374
thing. So Macho liked Mr. Aleman. That's the reason that he took
me there.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us how much money Mr. Aleman
needed?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, we never got to the point because when I
got there, I found out — I don't even think he owned the property. I
think the property belonged to his stepmother. It was like a
clouded title in a property.
Chairman Stokes, Well, was it Mr. Aleman wanted you to ar-
range a loan for him?
Mr. Trafficante. He thought maybe I could arrange a loan for
him, yeah.
Chairman Stokes. From whom were you going to arrange the
loan?
Mr. Trafficante. Well, at that particular time I was, my attor-
ney, Mr. Frank Gargano, was an attorney for Jimmy Hoffa, and I
thought maybe I could talk to him. I thought I could talk to my
attorney to see if he could help Mr. Aleman.
Chairman Stokes. And this would be a loan then from the Team-
sters?
Mr. Trafficante. Right.
Chairman Stokes. And had you ever arranged loans for other
people through the Teamsters?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. You don't recall — is this your testimony — you
don’t recall the amount that Aleman asked for?
Mr. Trafficante. No, I don't.
Chairman Stokes. How many meetings took place between you
and Mr. Aleman regarding this loan?
Mr. Trafficante. I would say the question of the loan was
decided the first time I met him, but then I went there, I think I
met him another couple of times. I don't remember meeting him in
any restaurant like he testified yesterday. Maybe it could be,
though, I am not saying. It could be but I don't
Chairman Stokes. Is it your best recollection then that you
probably met with him about three times?
Mr. Trafficante. Two or three times.
Chairman Stokes. And Mr. Gener was present for the first meet-
ing. Would he have been present for the other two meetings?
Mr. Trafficante. Mr. Gener was present at all the times that I
spoke with Mr, Aleman. To the best of my recollection he was
present.
Chairman Stokes. And was anyone else present on those occa-
sions?
Mr. Trafficante. There was another gentleman present, I
can’t
Chairman Stokes. Do you know his name?
Mr. Trafficante. No. Well, I will tell you, his nickname was
'*Coco." That is how — this was a friend of Mr. Bango, this Coco. No,
no, Darci, I read in the paper was supposed to be.
Chairman Stokes. How about George Nobregas, was he present?
Mr. Trafficante. George?
Chairman Stokes. N-o-b-r-e-g-a-s? Nobregas?
375
Mr. Trafficante. Maybe that is him. Maybe that is the same
guy. It was a dark complexioned guy.
Chairman Stokes. How about Angelo Bruno, was he ever pres-
ent?
Mr. Trafficante. He was present one .e, yes.
Chairman Stokes. So that the revuid is clear, would you name
everybody that you can recall being present?
Mr. Trafficante. That is about it. I don’t think there was any-
body else.
Chairman Stokes. OK. Just for the record, you name each of the
persons you say were present.
Mr. Trafficante. Macho Gener, this fellow Coco, I think, Nobre-
gas, whatever it is, Aleman, and Angelo Bruno, I think, was pres-
ent one time.
Chairman Stokes. And on each occasion was the purpose of the
meeting to discuss Aleman’s loan?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir.
Chairman Stokes. What was the purpose?
Mr. Trafficante. The next time, one of the purposes I seen him
after the loan, because like I told you, I think the matter of the
loan, I think it was decided the first time I met him. Then he
mentioned something about having some political influence in the
Dominican Republic. So Mr. Bruno had talked to me that he was
interested in getting some milk from the Dominican Republic, so I
took him over there to meet Mr. Aleman so maybe they could get
together. Mr. Aleman could facilitate this thing of the milk, to get
an export license to export milk from the Dominican Republic,
Chairman Stokes. Wasn’t Aleman already in trouble financially?
Mr. Trafficante, Yes, but that has nothing to do with it. He
could have made maybe some money with Mr. Bruno if he could
get him the export license. To the best of my recollection now that
is the way I think it was.
Chairman Stokes. Was this the export deal that had something
to do with milk?
Mr. Trafficante. Milk.
Chairman Stokes. Was there anything else you discussed at that
time?
Mr. Trafficante. As far as the Kennedy situation, I want to tell
you something now, Mr. Stokes. I am sure as I am sitting here that
all the discussion I had with Mr. Aleman, that I never made the
statement that Kennedy was going to get hit, because all the
discussion I made with Mr. Aleman, as sure as I am sitting here, I
spoke to him in Spanish. No reason for me to talk to him in
English because I can speak Spanish fluently and he speaks Span-
ish, that is his language. There was no reason for me to tell him in
English that Kennedy is going to get hit. I deny that I made that
statement.
Chairman Stokes. When did you first become aware that he had
made the statement?
Mr. Trafficante. When it was first published in some newspa-
per, the Post or the Times, 2 or 3 years ago.
Chairman Stokes, Were you aware of the fact that he had also
told the FBI about it much earlier than that?
376
Mr. Trafficante. I read it in the same article, I think, that he
was an FBI informant at that time.
Chairman Stokes. Are you aware of the fact that he said that he
had had a very involved discussion with you about politics? Did you
ever discuss politics?
Mr. Trafficante. I don’t remember having that discussion with
him by himself, like he claims, like I read it in the paper.
Chairman Stokes. When we take the statement that he attrh
butes to you, when he says that you said he is not going to be
reelected, and then when he says you said, “No, Jose, he is going to
be hit.” How could he in any way misstate a statement like that
from anything else you have said to him?
Mr. Trafficante. Because, first of all, like I told you, I was
speaking to him in Spanish, and in Spanish there was no way I
could say Kennedy is going to get hit. I didn’t say that. I might
have told him he wasn’t going to get reelected.
Chairman Stokes. What were you basing that on?
Mr. Trafficante. I could have told him that he was not going to
get reelected, not that Kennedy was going to get hit.
Chairman Stokes. How did you know Kennedy was not going to
get reelected?
Mr. Trafficante. I thought he wouldn’t.
Chairman Stokes. What had he done at that time that would
cause him not to be reelected?
Mr. Trafficante. At this particular time, first of all, there was
the Cuban question where they had the trouble with the Bay of
Pigs and all that, and they established the Cuban bases, and, if you
recall, there was a lot people criticizing it.
Chairman Stokes. Well, then
Mr. Trafficante. That is the best way that I can say it, if I even
told him that.
Chairman Stokes. From what you have said here today, then, in
all probability you did say to him no, Jose, he is not going to be
reelected. Did you say that?
Mr. Trafficante. I might have told him that but I didn’t tell
him that Kennedy was going to get hit. See, I still tell you that I
spoke to Aleman in Spanish. There was no reason for me to speak
to him in English because I doubt if 15 years ago he could speak
better English than he does today. There was no reason for me
Chairman Stokes. We can’t hear you.
Mr. Trafficante. There was no reason for me to speak to him in
English with his broken English, when I can speak fluent Spanish,
and he can speak fluent Spanish, and Gener, who was there all the
time, couldn’t understand English, The other guy, I doubt if he
could understand English, too, Nobregas, whatever his name was,
at that particular time.
Chairman Stokes. Do you recall ever talking to Mr. Aleman
about the problem Jimmy Hoffa was having with Attorney General
Robert Kennedy?
Mr. Trafficante. I don’t remember nothing about the discus-
sion. I couldn’t swear to nothing that I talked about him, about
Jimmy Hoffa. One thing I know for definite is I didn’t tell him
Kennedy was going to get hit, or that he interpreted it that way.
That is not right and that is not the truth. That is all I can say.
377
Chairman Stokes. When you first learned that he had said this
about you, did you contact anybody about it?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir. I didn't pay no importance to it at that
particular time. I never thought I would be here answering that
question today or be here for the assassination of Kennedy, as far
as that goes.
Chairman Stokes. I am sorry, I didn't hear.
Mr. Trafficante. I never thought at that time that I would be
here today being questioned about the assassination of Kennedy.
Chairman Stokes. Then, so I can summarize your testimony at
this point, you did know Mr. Aleman, you did have meetings with
Mr. Aleman, you probably discussed President Kennedy and his
reelection or his inability to be reelected, but you did not make the
statement he will be hit?
Mr. Trafficante. Right. I am sure I didn't. I am positive I didn't.
There was no reason for me to say that.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no further
questions.
Mr. Preyer, If you will pardon us for a moment, I would like to
confer with the members here.
There are no further questions from the panel. Under the House
rules, Mr. Trafficante, a witness at the conclusion of the question-
ing is entitled to make a statement for 5 minutes to explain his
testimony or to clarify it or to make any sort of statement he may
choose to make. At this time, do you care to say an}d:hing further
to the committee?
Mr. Trafficante. No, sir, your Honor, nothing.
Mr. Preyer. Very well, the committee will excuse the witness at
this time.
Let me caution everyone in the hearing room to remain seated
until the witness leaves the hearing room.
You are excused, Mr. Trafficante.
Mr. Trafficante. Thank you.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you for being here,
Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, the exhibit,
[Document handed to the clerk by Mr. Gonzalez.]
Mr. Gonzalez. This is the certified copy of the order.
Mr. Preyer. We will have that immunity order which has previ-
ously been inserted in the record.
The committee will take a brief 3-minute in-place recess at this
time. We will resume very quickly. The committee stands in recess,
[A short recess was taken.]
Chairman Stokes [now presiding]. The committee will come to
order.
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, the testimony of Santos Trafficante
concludes that part of the presentation by the staff to the commit-
tee of the basic outlines of the committee's investigation into the
possibility of organized crime connection to the assassination of
President Kennedy. As all can see from the testimony introduced,
the question remains, was organized crime involved in a plot to
assassinate President Kennedy? Did it have the motive, opportuni-
ty, and means to do so?
378
Obviously, the possibility cannot be dismissed, although it can
hardly be said to have been established. At this point, it is, in your
words, Mr. Chairman, perhaps only a little more than a ^^suspicion
suspected,'' not a “fact found."
The committee decided early in its investigation, as soon as it
realized that a Mafia plot to assassinate the President warranted
serious consideration, to assemble the most reliable information
available on organized crime in the United States. The details of
this phase of the committee's investigation will, of course, appear,
hopefully in full, in its final report, a report that will consider the
background of organized crime in America, the structure of the
Mafia in the early 1960's, the effort by the Kennedy administration
to suppress the mob, and the evidence that the assassination might
have been undertaken in retaliation for those efforts.
To scrutinize the possible role of organized crime in the assassi-
nation, the committee early brought on one of the country's lead-
ing experts on the subject. He is Ralph Salerno, whose career as an
organized crime investigator with the New York City Police De-
partment goes back to 1946. Mr. Salerno has since retired from the
New York City Police Department and I would note that on the
day of his retirement, the New York Times was moved to comment
that he perhaps knew more about the Mafia than any nonmember
in the United States.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Ralph
Salerno.
Chairman Stokes. The committee calls Mr. Salerno.
Please stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear
the testimony you will give before this committee is the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
TESTIMONY OF RALPH SALERNO
Mr. Salerno. I do.
Chairman Stokes. You may be seated.
The Chair recognizes counsel for the committee, Mr. Gary Corn-
well.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Salerno, when did you first become a consultant on orga-
nized crime to this committee?
Mr. Salerno. I began in late October or early November of last
year.
Mr. Cornwell. Prior to that time, what experience or training
had you had with respect to organized crime?
Mr. Salerno. I entered the New York City Police Department in
mid-September of 1946. A planned 3-month program of training in
the police academy was interrupted in November of 1946 when I
became one of a small group of men who were interviewed and
selected to be used in an undercover operation involving an orga-
nized crime assault which resulted in murder in New York City.
From that time throughout the remaining 20 years that I spent
with the New York City Police Department, my entire career I was
engaged in investigations relating to organized crime.
Mr. Cornwell. At the time of your retirement, what was your
position?
379
Mr. Salerno. I retired as a supervisor of detectives in the Cen-
tral Investigation Bureau, which is the organized crime investiga-
tion unit of the New York City Police Department.
Mr. Cornwell. During your tenure with the New York City
Police Department, did you ever have an occasion to discuss orga-
nized crime with any underworld members?
Mr. Salerno. Yes. That was something that during those years
was a common occurrence. We would bring in people so involved
into our office for conversations, discussions, interviews, if you will.
We would interview them in the hallways of the courthouses, when
there was a court appearance that we had caused to occur. We
would talk to them in the street. We would talk to them in their
neighborhoods, we would talk to them in their homes. So that I can
say that literally I have had hundreds of such conversations.
Mr. Cornwell. During that period did you have a chance to
review conversations of such persons that may have been obtained
by electronic surveillance?
Mr. Salerno. Yes. The State of New York has had legal author-
ity for the issuance of ex parte orders for electronic surveillance
since 1939. That was a very useful technique which was widely
used in the New York City Police Department during the 20 years
that I have served.
Mr. Cornwell, After the 20 years of experience investigating
organized crime with the New York City Police Department, you
retired in 1966. After that point, did you continue to be in any way
involved with the subject matter of organized crime?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; all of my professional work in the intervening
12 years has been with this subject. I worked largely as a consul-
tant to various bodies. I did return to a more active role in 1973
and 1974. In those 2 years I became the chief racket investigator in
the district attorney’s office of New York County, one of the five in
New York City, and I served in that capacity for 2 years.
My remaining time has been as a consultant. Part of that time is
given largely to the training of other law enforcement officers oh
all levels of government, through some 35 States of the United
States and in four Canadian provinces, and in the Commonwealth
of Puerto Rico.
In addition to that, I have served as a consultant for government
and nongovernment bodies addressing the subject of organized
crime.
Mr. Cornwell. Please give us a brief resume of the committees
or commissions that you have served as a consultant at any time
since 1966?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir. I served as consultant to the President’s
Commission on Violence. My work there was a paper on the use of
violence and fear in organized crime activities and matters.
I was a consultant to the President’s Commission on Campus
Unrest. My work there dealt largely with police intelligence proce-
dures and how they were utilized.
I worked for the National Council on Crime and Delinquency
from 1967 through 1969. In 1970 I spent a year consulting with the
Hudson Institute in Westchester County, N.Y., which is a policy
research center. My work there was as part of a study on the
problem of narcotics in the State of New York.
380
I spent 1976 as a consultant to the Citizens Campaign Against
Bootlegged Cigarettes. My work there was in describing the prob-
lem caused by the almost total establishment of an illegal distribu-
tion system for smuggled or stolen, certainly untaxed, cigarettes
and the invasion of the legitimate distribution network in that
industry all along the eastern seaboard.
Mr. Cornwell. In addition to your experiences as a consultant,
have you ever qualified as an expert on organized crime in the
courts?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I have been qualified as an expert for testimo-
ny in Federal courts, in the courts of some five States, and these
have been in matters of criminal cases and in civil litigation.
I have been accepted as an expert for testimony concerning
organized crime in two Canadian provinces, the Province of Alber-
ta and I have testified in the Province of Quebec.
Mr. Cornwell. You also served at one time on the President's
Crime Commission, is that correct?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I served on the Organized Crime Task Force
of the President's Crime Commission while still a member of the
New York City Police Department. That was in 1966.
Mr. Cornwell. And in addition to testifying as an expert on
organized crime in the various Federal and State courts you men-
tioned, have you ever testified on that subject before any legislative
bodies?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; more than one-half dozen times before legisla-
tive committees of the Congress of the United States, in both
Houses. I have testified before legislative bodies of some 10 States.
Mr. Cornwell. Would you simply name some of those?
Mr. Salerno. Beg pardon?
Mr. Cornwell. Would you simply identify some of those legisla-
tive bodies for us?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir. While still with the New York City Police
Department, three detectives and myself were assigned with the
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by
Senator John McClellan. Over a period of months we prepared for
it a presentation on organized crime.
The specific assignment that I had from the New York City
Police Department was to look into all matters that would be
revealed by Joseph Valachi in his testimony before that Senate
committee. We were to independently investigate in an attempt to
prove or disprove anything that he might have said that we could
gather evidence concerning.
I have also appeared before a committee chaired by Senator
Smathers, which was looking into the problem of loansharking.
I have appeared twice before House committees chaired by Mr.
Dante Fascell.
I appeared before the Crime Committee that was looking into
organized crime, chaired by Mr. Pepper.
I have appeared in legislative bodies in the States of Massachu-
setts, New York, New Jersey, California, Indiana, and Ohio.
Mr. Cornwell. Have you ever written any books or articles on
this subject?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I wrote a book which was entitled, “The Crime
Confederation," published by Doubleday in 1969. The subtitle of that
381
book is “La Cosa Nostra and Other Allied Operations in Organized
Crime/’
I have done a number of magazine articles for public press as
well as for professional journals.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Salerno, this committee has received evi-
dence from and concerning Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante,
Are you familiar with those individuals?
Mr. Salerno, Yes; I am familiar with them and I have been for
some 21 years.
Mr. Cornwell. The committee, in part, has received testimony of
Mr. Trafficante. For example, among his testimony, he stated that
he did not know Jack Ruby or Lee Harvey Oswald, and his testimo-
ny, although not directly but at least indirectly, perhaps, bore on
the question of whether or not he or his associates may have had
the motive or opportunity or means to assassinate the President.
Would you tell us whether or not you have any information
which might shed light upon the questions that we just noted?
Mr. Salerno. Yes. I think I have a considerable amount of
evidence for this committee to consider in trying to evaluate both
method, means, all three — methods, means or certainly motive on
the part of Mr. Trafficante or people known to be associated with
him.
Mr. Cornwell. Tell us what you know about those two individ-
uals which might shed some light upon that subject.
Mr. Salerno. Well, I indicated that I became aware of Mr.
Trafficante some 21 years ago. That particular occurrence was one
that took place in the State of New York on November 14, 1957,
which I note is the eve of Mr. Trafficante ’s birthday. He gave it as
November 15. At that time, the New York State Police discovered a
meeting of a large number of people, some 63 were actually identi-
fied at that time. The people involved knew that they had not
completely identified all of the people present. If I may, I would
like to make use of an exhibit at this time to be able to discuss the
Apalachin meeting with you.
Mr. Cornwell. May we have JFK exhibit F-547A displayed?
Mr. Chairman, may we have JFK F-547A admitted into the
record at this time?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[JFK exhibit F-547A follows:]
35-379 0 - 79-25
382
Apalachin Meeting, November 14, 1957
Mr. Salerno. That is a map of the United States, Mr. Cornwell,
which indicates the areas from which people who were known to
have attended came, from — northern California, southern Califor-
nia, State of Arizona, the Rocky Mountain State of Colorado, Mis-
souri, Dallas, Tex., Tampa, Fla., the Middle West, the New England
States, the Middle Atlantic States, so that quite candidly it can be
labeled a national meeting.
At that time, a great deal of attention was given to it, in an
analysis of what was there in an attempt to try to discover why
they might have been there. Many of the people who were there fit
the phrase ''known to the police.'' They had criminal arrest rec-
ords, they had criminal conviction records. That record since that
time, 21 years ago, has become even more extensive, and I think it
is a fair characterization today to say that there is very little doubt
that that was a national underworld meeting.
One of the people identified at the location in Apalachin, N.Y.,
had given the name of Louie Santos and he gave an address of a
hotel in Havana. In trying to pursue exactly who this person was,
two of the officers of the New York State Police made an identifica-
tion of Mr. Santos Trafficante from photographs of him as being
the person who had given the name of Louie Santos. So that we
can then see that he has associated with all of the people who were
there. People such as Vito Genovese, a man who died in a Federal
prison in the 9th year of a 15-year term for dealing in heroin. Mr.
Carmine Galante was at that meeting. He was sentenced to 15
years for dealing in heroin.
Mr. John Ormento, who was at that meeting, is still serving a 40-
year sentence for dealing in heroin. Mr. Trafficante, in his testimo-
ny today, indicated that he was a partner of Joseph Stassi in a
casino in Havana. Mr. Stassi has been sentenced to Federal prison
for dealing in heroin. Mr. Trafficante here, in his testimony, ac-
knowledges a long-time friendship over a period of years, one in
which the people involved could have great confidence in them-
383
selves with Sam Giancana. Mr. Sam Giancana has been the victim
of a homicide and has been killed. Mr. Trafficante indicated in his
testimony here this morning that he knew John Roselli, that he
had dinner with that gentleman 3 weeks before he was killed, his
body dismembered and stuffed into an oil drum and thrown into
the sea only to come up in Biscayne Bay.
My unit in the New York City Police Department on September
22, 1966, interrupted a luncheon in a restaurant known as Stella in
Queens County, N.Y. Mr. Marcello was present at that luncheon.
Mr. Trafficante was present at that luncheon.
I would like to at this time introduce an exhibit of the seating
arrangement of that particular meeting, if I may.
Mr. Cornwell. I would like to use that exhibit. I would like to
have you describe that in more detail in a moment. Let me ask you
before we go to the exhibit, if we might, you have indicated this
was the point in time in which your attention was focused upon
Mr. Trafficante.
Mr. Chairman, I request JFK exhibit F-619, a photograph of Mr.
Trafficante, be entered into the record.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, so ordered.
[JFK exhibit F-619 follows:]
JFK Exhibit F-619
Mr. Cornwell. What subsequently did you determine to be the
nature of Mr. Trafficante's relationships with these kinds of people
that you have just named?
Mr. Salerno. Certainly his presence with them classifies him as
an associate of such persons. He goes into business with them in a
gambling casino. He will be in New York quite some distance from
his home with an interesting assemblage of people that we know a
great deal about. He is at an underworld meeting, a national
underworld meeting in New York so that we came, in the New
York City Police Department, to certainly agree with diverse other
law enforcement agencies that Mr. Trafficante was an organized
crime leader, the leader of a criminal organization in the State of
Florida.
Mr. Cornwell. You state that he is the leader of an organized
crime organization in Florida. Before we go further, would you tell
us what that term means in the context that you have used it?
What is organized crime?
385
Mr. Salerno. Organized crime sometimes has many different
meanings to different people. There have been some successful
attempts in some legal definitions of the phrase “organized crime.
The Congress of the United States, in the Organized Crime Control
Act of 1970, very clearly defined what would be considered Federal
violations of law in terms of organized crime gambling. In that
instance, the Congress set forth the standard of five or more people
being involved, the volume of the gambling reaching or exceeding
$2,000 per day and requiring that evidence show that the particu-
lar gambling operation was in existence for 30 days or more. That
is organized crime gambling in its legal definition. In one profes-
sional conference that I have attended, organized crime was de-
scribed as a self-perpetuating, continuing criminal conspiracy for
profit and for power using fear and corruption and seeking immu-
nity from law.
I think one of the best ways to describe organized crime or to
have it understood is in a way that was described by scholars at
Cornell Law School, in an institute where prosecutors from around
the United States are trained. In that instance, they set forth three
ways in which organized crime can manifest itself and be recog-
nized. The descriptions given are: Organized crime as a venture;
organized crime as an enterprise; organized crime as a syndicate.
And the different ways in which the manifestation comes are
these: An organized crime enterprise is a day-to-day, ongoing busi-
ness that is illegal in its nature because it is supplying some illegal
service or some illegal product.
Two examples of that would be a sizable gambling operation that
would meet the Federal definition as legally defined on a day-to-
day basis. Offering the illegal service of accepting wagers, a group
of criminals who would conspire to do so on an ongoing basis,
supply narcotics to procure it, to cut it down to a street level
quantity and then enter it into a distribution system. That would
be an organized crime enterprise.
Organized crime can also involve itself as a syndicate, a criminal
syndicate. As a syndicate, organized crime will exercise various
forms of control which are not unlike those of Government. They
will set standards. The payoff price on the numbers shall be this
and it shall not be higher and it shall not be lower and they impose
that standard on their own group and on others in an area where
they exercise a sphere of influence. They will collect taxes, if you
will, although the legal definition of that collection of taxes would
be extortion, but they are playing a quasi-government role.
You can also have an organized crime venture, a single occur-
rence which, per se, is not organized crime. Bank robbery. Not
every bank robbery can be described as organized crime; but where
the members of an organized crime syndicate will either inspire,
will set the plans for and then participate in the profits from that
bank robbery, that particular bank robbery would be an organized
crime venture. I think, Mr. Cornwell, I have an even better exam-
ple for you of an organized crime venture. When Mr. Trafficante
joined with Mr. Giancana and joined with Mr. Roselli and joined
with representatives in the CIA in a plot to kill Premier Castro,
that was an organized crime venture, a single occurrence.
386
Mr. Cornwell. Which of the types of organized crime that you
just described is it that Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello are
associated with?
Mr. Salerno. They are leaders of an organized crime syndicate,
each of them, in their home areas. I have some evidence that I
would like to offer you now. This is a conversation that was over-
heard in which Mr. Santos Trafficante was involved and upon
which no questions to him have been based. This was found in the
FBI file which now is labeled. La Cosa Nostra file. The conversa-
tion took place in a restaurant in Florida in 1963 and the quote of
Mr. Trafficante reads thus:
Let me tell you this. This is what happens to me. Now, I don’t give a (obscene)
about the S. & G. 1 know when I’m beat, you understand?
I got a numbers office in Orlando. They grab everybody, forty or fifty people.
Forty or Fifty thousand in bond. They have no evidence, but when they get through,
it costs thousands.
I got another office in St. Cloud, Fla. You can’t even find St. Cloud on the
(obscene) map, but the (obscene) “G” found it.
Kennedy’s right-hand man, he goes through the (obscene) nigger town. Must have
been 2,000 niggers, and makes a (obscene) big raid over there.
Just a start, any (obscene) place that they found a phone connection in there from
Tampa. * ♦ ♦
Mr. Trafficante in that conversation is describing his interest in
an organized crime enterprise.
Mr. Cornwell. What, if any, real evidence is there that the
syndicate that you say Marcello and Trafficante run in their re-
spective areas, exists much less that they are members of it.
Mr. Salerno. I think at this date the evidence is overwhelming.
It is certainly more than sufficient to convince the prudent man
that we speak of in legal and court terminology. I think in order to
give you an understanding of that, I just have to dip back for a
moment, briefly, into history. The particular criminal syndicates
that Mr. Marcello and Mr. Trafficante belong to are syndicates
which have set a requirement that membership shall be limited to
people who are of Italian extraction on both sides of their lineage.
In sociological studies that have been made, we do note that the
overwhelming majority of population, immigrants who have come
to the United States from Italy, came from the southern part of
that nation. That's the agricultural part of the nation, the more
economically deprived. So that's where we got most of our Italian
population. I think there is a very long and a very clear record
that many of those people made great contributions to their new
country, the United States.
Unfortunately, in mass migration of that type, some people will
come in who have a criminal background. We know historically
from scholarly studies, that in the southern part of Italy, three
secret criminal societies exist in the area around Naples, it had the
name of Camora, in what is the heel and the toe of the Italian
boot, if you look at a map of Italy. That is the region of Calabria.
They had a similar criminal organization very closely akin to the
Camora. It had the name of the Honored Society, although the
Italian police today will refer to that organization back there in
Italy as the Calabrian Mafia today. The word Mafia itself was the
name given to criminal societies on the island of Sicily. Some of
these people connected with those societies came into the United
387
States. They began to continue their criminal career. It is almost
natural that their first victims were their own fellow Italian immi-
grants. There’s an apocryphal story of the son of one such being
accused of that fact, that his father had victimized his own fellow
Italian immigrants.
His response is said to have been, “Well, of course it had to have
been that way. My father didn’t know how to say stick em up in
English. Who else could he rob?”
One of the things that played a role, one of the things that
played an important role, I believe was the national prohibition
era. It called for the expansion in the number of people who would
be required to either help import, to manufacture, to distribute and
sell so that those Italian immigrants were widely accepted by like
criminals who had come from other backgrounds, whether they
were Jewish gangs or the Irish gangs that we have established
existed back in that time period.
In his testimony in 1963, Joseph Valachi told us that at the end
of the prohibition era, in the years 1930 and 1931, among the
diverse Italian groups, there were differences that resulted in gang
wars, but certainly by 1932, they had all joined together in a single
Italian segment for organized crime. Therefore, it’s technically,
perhaps, incorrect to use the word Mafia. Some people hold that
that can only be applied to Sicilians. The group has others than
Sicilians in it and that is the organization that the FBI has docu-
mented is now called La Cosa Nostra. I would like to point out, I
have a copy of an affidavit that was sworn to by an FBI man in the
courts of Ohio just last year in December of 1977. This affidavit by
special agent Michael Kehoe was one of a number that were filed
in court proceedings which resulted in convictions for hornicide.
The sworn document indicates very clearly that that particular
organized crime syndicate as still being extant in the area sur-
rounding Cleveland, I am sorry to say, Mr. Stokes. There are a
series of killings there in a gang war, and he indicates terminolo^
and facts, indicating that what I have been describing to you is still
something that is current. I suggest perhaps, Mr, Cornwell, I can
make that part of the record.
Mr. Cornwell. We have a copy of that marked for identification
as JFK exhibit F-553, Mr. Chairman. May we have that entered
into the record at this time?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record at this time.
[JFK exhibit F-553 was marked for identification and entered
into the record.]
388
JFK Exhibit F-553
AFFIDAV'IT
1 , E. MICHAEL KAHOE, Special Agent r Federal Bureau of
Investigation^ hereinafter referred to as the FBI, being duly sworn,
deposes and states as follows:
(1) The Affiant is employed as a Special Agent of the
FBI and has been so employed' for, the past seven and one^half years.
AS a result of personal participation in this investigation, and
as a result of reports made to me by other Special Agents of the
FBI, I am thoroughly farailar with all aspects of the investigation.
(2) This affidavit, it is submitted, sets forth probable
cause to believe that JAMES T. LICAVOLI, also known as JACK WHITE;
JAMES T. FRATIAN^, also known as "Weasel”; JOHN P. CALANDRA;
ANGELO LONAROO; RONALD CARABBIA; PASQUALE J. CISTERNINO, also
known as •Butchie"; THOMAS JAMES SINITO; RAYMOND K. FERRITTO;
ALFRED S. CALABRESE, also known as "ALLIE", and others as yet
unknown, are associated in fact in an enterprise as defined in
Title 18, United States Code, Section 1961 (4), the activitle^
of which affect interstate Commerce, . to wit: a group associated
i
in fact to control loan sharking and other criminal activities
in Northern Ohio and to commit various criminal acts, including
murder, threats involving murder, and conspiracy to murder,
and participating directly and Indirectly in the conduct of
the enterprise*a affairs through a pattern of racketeering
activity, including threats Involving aggravated eurdvr and
lelonleus assault* felortes pualshJtsle by laprlsor^nt for
more than c«e year t?»e Cnlo salted Co-'U, Sections 2*51.1
affcd 2**1. 11. a?-.d K»il In vtbWtlbn o? IS.
States Cede. Sectior. snd are conspiring to do so in
violation of Sections 1962 (e) and (dj of Title 16, United
States Code.
389
(3) The Affiant has learned through numerous conversations
/With other Agents of the FBI and through a comprehensive review
of confidential information furnished by reliable informants
to Agents of the FBI in Cleveland, Ohio, and elsewhere, that
there exists within the United States an organized crime conspiracy
which is controlled nationally by a membership which is exclusively
Italian. Geographical areas of the United States are apportioned
to the members of this conspiracy for the conduct of illegal
activities. Within this organized criminal conspiracy there
are "families" in charge of certain criminal activity in each
geographical area. Each "family" is headed by a "capo" or boss’
the second in command is the "sotto-capo" or underboss. A
"consiglieri" or counselor is typically an elder member who
serves as an adviser. Various members of the "family" are
controlled by an individual referred to as a "caporegima" or
captain, who 4-s responsible to the capo. The said criminal
organization Jin the United States is controlled by a policy
group known as the "commission". The "commission" members, are
actually the various bosses of the "families". This criminal
organization is engaged in the conduct of gambling, loan sharking,
extortion; murder, labor racketeering, and other violations of
federal and state law.
(4) The Affiant knows through information received from
numerous FBI Agents, who received said information from con-
fidential sources, that this organized crime organization,
referred to herein, is sometimes known as "The Outfit", "La Cosa
Nostra" (LCN) , or "our thing".
(5) The descriptive information of the following
Individuals, whose names appear herein, has been obtained
by the Affiant through a review of reports of the FBI,
Contained within these reports are confirmations regarding
- 2 -
390
the addresses and other descriptive infocraatlon of the
individuals mentioned herein. This information was obtained
through checks with the Identif icaation Division of the FBI*
with' direct cont act with officers of the Cleveland, Ohio,
Police Department and other law enforcement agencies, and
through contact with the Ohio Bell Telephone Company and the
Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company.
(6) The following individuals are referred to herein:
ALFRED CALABRESE, also known as ALLIC, age 34,
was last known to reside at 107 Evangeline Road, Cleveland,
Ohio. ALFRED CALABRESE'S arrest record shows convictions for
Breaking and Entering (three convictions) and Armed Bank
Robbery.
RONALD DAVID CARABBIA, bom April 8, 1929, at
Struthers, Ohio, 5*11", ISO pounds, brown hair. Social Security Number
301-22-3250, residence: 2277 Knollwood, Poland, Ohio, business:
Crown Vending, 2719 Midlothian Boulevard, Struthers, Ohio. '
PASQUALE CISTERNINO, also known as "Butchie”, *
age 38, resides at 924 London Road, Cleveland, Ohio. PASQUALE
CISTERNINO* s arrest record shows three convictions on Burglary
charges.
TONY DELSANTER, also known as **Dope", deceased,
resided at 373 Central Parkway, Warren, Ohio. TONY DELSANTER* s
arrest record has convictions for Burglary and Larceny and
Robbery .
JAMES T. FRATIA^r born AIADENA T. FRATIANO,
also known as *Wcasel”# on Noveaber 13, 1913, at Ripallaosani
Caapbbasal, Italy, residence: 40C California Avenue, Moss Beach,
California.
JAMES LXCA*.'OLI. also known as JACIC MKXTC, age 73,
resides at 12301 Falrview Court, Cleveland, Ohio, with PAUL
CIRICILLO, also known as PAUL LISH. JAKES LICAVOLl*s arrest
record shows a conviction for Blackmail.
- 3 -
391
^GELO LONARDO, age 66, resides at 3121 Bremerton
Road, Pepper Pike, Ohio. ANGELO LONARDO is married to a sister
of JOHN T. SCALISH. ANGELO LONARDO has been convicted of
Blackmail.
THOMAS JAMES SINITO, born September 18, 1938, at
Cleveland, Ohio; 5*7", 175 pounds, black hair, brown eyes. Social
Security Number 273-32-8371, residence: Garfield Heights, Ohio,
arrested for Assault, Felonious Assault, Resisting Arrest*
(7) Confidential Source |1, named herein, has been a
reliable source of the FBI in excess of ten years and has provide
accurate and reliable information to Special Agents of the FBI
concerning Illegal activities of known criminals in the Cleveland
Ohio, area, and elsewhere, on at least two hundred occasions.
This information has proven to be accurate and reliable in that
it has been substantiated by independent investigation of the
FBI and through information furnished by other confidential,
sources of the FBI.
(8) Confidential Source II became aware of the activit
of JAMES LICAVOLI, also known as JACK*WHITE, and others, through
hiB personal association with, and hearing statements made by,
i
JAMES LICAVOLI, also known as JACK WHITE, LEO MOCERI,.TONY
DELSANTER, and ANTHONY MILANO.
(9) Confidential Source #1, who has admitted being
a member of La Cosa Nostra, advised Special Agents of the FBI
in July of 1967, he had learned through direct statements made b}
ether nesbers of La Cosa Nostra that JOHN T. SCALISH was the boss
eC the Cleveland organised crime family, and JA.HCS LICAVOLI, alsc
known as JACK NMtrr, LEO NOCCR:, ANTHONY MILA.VO. and TONY DCX&ANT
were mecbcrs.
(10) As early as December of 1967, Confidential Sourct
identified ANTHONY MILANO as the underboss of the Cleveland
organized crime family.
- 4 -
392
* (11) In March of 1971, Confidential Source #1 learned
through statements made by LEO MOCERI in March of 1971 that
LEO MOCERI , TONY DELSANTER and JAI-IES LICAVOLI , also known as '
JACK WHITE/ were all involved in 3oan sharking activities in Ohior
and are in partnership with "BUTCHIE” CISTERNINO and EUGENE
CIASULLO. LEO MOCERI expressed concern to Confidential Source II
that Cleveland boss JOHN SCALISK had refused LEO MOCERI *s
request to approve assassination of potential witnesses against
LEO MOCERI.
(12) In August of 1973/ Confidential Source fl advised
he learned through statements made by LEO MOCERI in August of
1973 that ANTHONY MILANO, Cleveland underboss , was anxious to
get his son, PETER JOHN MILANO, to return to Cleveland from
Los Angeles and work with ANTHONY MILANO*s nephew, Cleveland
La Cosa Nostra member JOHN NARDI. According to LEO MOCERI,
JOHN NARDI had five criminal associates who were killing people
by putting bombs in their cars. JOHN NARDI appeared to be
making a play for leadership in the Cleveland organized crime
family. ^ .
(13) In December of 1973, Confidential Source II
advised that during the course of a discussion with LEO MOCERI,
he learned that LEO MOCERI had $100,000 on the street in loan
shark loans. ,
(14) In October of 1976, Confidential Source |1
advised that in October of 1976, he learned through statements
made by JAMES LICAVOLI, also known as JACK WHITE, that TONY
DELSANTER was avoiding as many people as possible. Confidential
Source 11 advised that during the course of a conversation with
JA.MES LZCA^.’CLl, also known as JACK WHITE, he learned that four
Cleveland family members, who were not further identified, had
alllgned themselves with the -Irish mob" headed by DANNY GREENE.
JAMES LICAVOLI, also known as JACK WHITE, desq^bed DANNY GR£0 ;e
- 5 -
393
and his associates as a tightly-knit group who were utilizing
explosives and other sophisticated weapons to attempt to gain
control o£ criminal activities in Cleveland. JAMES LICAVOLl,
also known as JACK WHITE, further stated that he and TONY
DELSANTER are now convinced that they have to kill DANNY
GREENE i£ they hope to remain in power.
(15) Confidential Source 12 has been a reliable
source of the Cleveland Division of the FBI for more than
ten years and has provided accurate and reliable information
concerning illegal activities of known criminals in the Cleveland,
Ohio, area, and elsewhere, on at least one hundred occasions.
The information has proven to be accurate and reliable in that
it was substantiated and corroborated by other confidential source
information and by independent investigation by Special Agents
of the FBI.
(16) Confidential Source 42, who resides in Northern Ohio
became aware of the Illegal activities of JAMBS LICAVOLI, also
known as JACK WHITE, and others through personal association
with, and through hearing statements made by, JOHN NAROI,
ANTHONY PANZARELLA, DANIEL GREENE, and others. Information
furnished by Confidential Source #2 has resulted in more than
ten federal and local felony convictions.
(17) On September 15, 1976, Confidential Source 42.
advised a Special Agent of the FBI, who in turn advised the
Affiant, that during conversations with JOHN NARDI as recently
as the week ending September 15, 1976, source determined that
during the late evening of .September 10, 1976, JOHN NARDI,
while exiting the Italian American Brotherhood Club on Mayfield
Road, Cleveland, Ohio, was shot at from two cars; each car
containing two individuals. Confidential Source 42 advised
that at least five shots had been fired at JOHN NARDI; however,
he (NARDI) was not hurt.
- 6 -
394
(18) Affiant knows fcom personal investigation
conducted by Special Agents of the FBI on May 17, 1977, results
of which were made known to the Affiant, that on May 17, 1977,
JOHN NARDI was killed at approximately 3:00 PM when a bomb
✓
contained in a vehicle parked next to JOHN NARDI *s vehicle
exploded as JOHN NARDI was attempting to enter his vehicle.
(19} The affidavit of Special Agent ROBERT 5.
FRIEDRICK of the FBI, executed November 7, 1977, in support
of a complaint for the arrest of RAYMOND W. FERRITTO for a
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 844 (h) (1),
and the affidavit of FBI Special Agent ROBERT S. FRIEDRICK,
executed October 28, 1977, in support of a search warrant of
3316 Greengarden Boulevard, Erie, Pennsylvania, and other
locations, are hereby ^incorporated by reference herein as if
set forth fully in this affidavit.
(20) On November 11, 1977, RAYMOND W, FERRITTO
surrendered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the offense
charged in the complaint referred to above.
(21) On December 3, 1977, and December 4, 1977,
RAYMOND WILLIAM FERRITTO advised Special Agents of the FBI,*
who in turn have advised the Affiant of the following:
(22) RAYMOND WILLIAM FERRITTO advised that he is a
long-time associate of JAMES "THE WEASEL* FRATIAt^^f rom
California, who, according to FERRITTO, i s an LCN me mber .
FERRITTO met with FRATIANO in a downtov^ Cleveland^^^^io,
hotel in the late summer of 1976. During^innerTFRATIAt^-*
discussed in detail with FERRITTO the problems the Cleveland
family of the LCN was having in controlling the town and the
fight that the Cleveland LCN family and JAMES LICAVOLl, also-
known as JACK WHITE, was having with the JOHN NARDI-DANXEL GREENE
group. FERRITTO was told by FRATIAl^'that LCN MEMBER ANTHONY
"THE DOPE* DELSANTER had a "job* for FERRITTO. FRATIANO told
- 7 -
395
FERRITTO that he was leaving town in the mocning, but that he
would be coming back thcough Cleveland on his way to the Kest
Coast In a short time and that he would arrange a meeting
between FERRITTO and TONY ”THE DOPE" DELSANTER.
(23) Approximately two weeks later (late summer o£ 1976] ,
FERRITTO was telephonically contacted at his residence in Zzie,
Pennsylvania, by FRATIAl^ and told to drive to Warren, Ohio.
That evening, FRATIAI^f FERRITTO, and ANTHONY DELSANTER
net at Cherry's Restaurant and Lounge in Warren, Ohio, to
discuss the "job" that DELSANTER had for FERRITTO. FRATIANp
left the company of FERRITTO and DELSANTER after stating,
"You two got business to take care of. I'll see you later."
DELSANTER told FERRITTO that the NARDl-GKEENE faction was
attempting to take over, that the "family" was being hurt both
physically and in reputation by the violence in Cleveland, and
that NARDI and GREENE must be killed. DELSANTER told FERRITTO
that the "contract" would have to be okayed by the boss, JACK
fi
WHITE, but that FRATIANO-"had vouched for FERRITTO with DELSANTER.
A
DELSANTER told FERRITTO at this meeting that he would be back
in touch with him.
(24) Approximately one month later, believed to be
September of 1976, FERRITTO was called to Warren, Ohio, by his
close associate, RONALD CARABDIA, also known as R.C. , of Youngs**
town, Ohio. A meeting was again held at Cherry's Restaurant
and Lounge. Attending this meeting were ANTHONY DELSANTER,
JAMES LICAVOLI, also known as JACK WHITE, RAYMOND FERRITTO,
PASQUALE CISTERNINO, also known as "BUTCHIE", and RONALD
CARA3E1A. At this meeting, the "contract" for the "hit" on
JOHN NARDI and DANIEL GREEN was given by JAMES LICAVOLI, also .
known as JACK WHITE, to RAYMOND FERRITTO. No specific fee was
discussed except that LICAVOLI told FERRITTO, "You'd have all
the money you need for a lifetime."
-B-
396
(25) Following this meeting with DELSANTSR, LICAVOLI /
CISTERNINO, and CARABBIA, FERRITTO spent the next several
months attempting to find the right opportunity to kill' both
JOHN NARDI and DANIEL GREENE. During these attempts, FERRITTO
found that both NARDI and GREENE were extremely cautious because
of other attempts made on their lives. FERRITTO learned that
at least three attempts on NARDI 's life, two by gunfire and
one attempt to bomb the car at the Cleveland Airport, were
unsuccessful. These attempts, however, had made both NARDI
and GREENE wary of any stranger. FERRITTO also learned
that they were both now carrying guns. FERRITTO advised that
he had learned of these attempts on the lives of NARDI and
GREENS through conversation with PASQUALE J. CISTERNINO.
(26) FERRITTO demanded a "sit^own** to disetiss his
situation and "his contract" on NARDI and GREENE. In the
spring, believed to be April 1977, FERRITTO met with the top
LICAVOLI lieutenant, JOHN CALANDRA, RONALD CARABBIA, and
PASQUALE CISTERNINO in Warren, Ohio. At this meeting,
JOHN CALANDRA Stated that he was speaking for LICAVOLI and
I
told FERRITTO that they wanted NARDI and GREENE killed
more than ever, and that FERRITTO still had the "contract"
but that so did others and whoever* got them first would be paid.
FERRITTO was told that he would receive $20,000 for either hit
or that he would be taken to Detroit by WHITE and made a member
of "our thing", and given a 25 per cent cut of racket proceeds
(including barbut, gambling and loan sharking) in the Warren-
Young stown-Cleve land area.
(27) FERRITTO advised that he had learned that JOHN
NARDI had been killed in a bomb blast in Kay of 1977 and asked
RONALD CARABBIA if the job had been done by "BUTCHIE" CISTERNINO
and CARABBIA told him that "Naw, *BUTCHIE* belonged to »the
gang that couldn't shoot straight'."
- 9 -
397
(28) FERR1.^W concinuea cnrougn s/«.
to Bttenipt to locate the perfect opportunity to kill DANIEL
GREENE,’ but that due to circumstances, the perfect opportunity
did not present itself. In August 1977, FERRITTO attended the
funeral of ANTHONY "THE DOPE" DELSANTER and sought out the
opportunity to discuss the situation with JACK WHITE. JACK WHITE
reaffirmed the contract on GREENE and told FERRITTO that JOHN
CALANDRA had been speaking for him and the offer to join "our
thing" by being sponsored by WHITE was bona fide. FERRITTO
complained of the lack of cooperation and assistance that he
was receiving in his search for GREENE and was told by WHITE
that he should contact JOHN CALANDRA whenever he needed anything
as CALANDRA was WHITE’S right-hand man.
tRe^^QOU r se of the summer of 1977, FERRITTO ^
met between 20 and 25 tim^with JOHN CALANDRA, and CALANDRA
provided the'^lluwTnghelp per instructions of JACK WHITE.
CALANDRA had the telephone at the DANIEL J. GREENE residence
taped for lead purposes. FERRITTO often complained that the
tapes were too old to help him as it took two or three days
for the tapes to get in FERRITTO* s hands. When FERRITTO complained
to CALANDRA or to "BUTCHIE" CISTERNINO, both Of whom provided the
tapes to him, he was told that the tapes came through ANGELO
LONARDO, also known as "BIG ANGE", from THOMAS SINITO.
(30) During May of 1977, PASQUALE CISTERNINO and ALFRED
CALABRESE provided an automobile to FERRITTO, which was a 1973
blue Plymouth- This car was given to FERRITTO with the explanation
that he could have it because it had been seen in the Cleveland
area on several occasions while CISTERNIO was going after NARDI
or GREENE.
(31) In June of 1977, FERRITTO cooplained to JOHN CALANDRA
about his out-of-pocket expenses and insisted that he needed soae
expense money. Two days after this conversation with CALANDRA,
RONALD CARA3BIA gave FERRITTO $5,000 in cash and told him, "Here
is the money CALANDRA gave me to give to you."
- 10 -
35-379 0 - 79-26
398
32. I< ^ugus t o> 1977, FERRITTO a.ld CISTERNINO placed a
"bomb box" in the bushes in front of DANIEL GREENE 's apartment
building. This box was made out of approximately 3/8 inch
metal. The purpose of the box, according to FERRITTO, was that
if they spotted GREENE coming or going from the apartment,
that a bomb package could be placed in this metal container
which was to serve as a blast director, as FERRITTO was- told
by CISTERNINO that dynamite blasts must be directed toward the
victim.
33. On December 4, 1977, affiant was advised by Lieutenant
EDWARD KOVACIC, Cleveland Police Department, that during the
week of November 21, 1977, officers of the Cleveland Police
Department found in the bushes outside the front door of the
apartment building at 15500 Lake Shore Boulevard, Cleveland,
Ohio, a box made of approximately 3/8 inch metal, closed on five
sides, which had legs composed of 6 inch spikes, welded to the
box. A plastic container containing -vnuts and boltsjwas found
inside this box. Lieutenant KOVACIC indicated that such a box
could be utilired to direct the force of explosives.
Affiant was advised by another Special Agent of the
FBI on December 4, 1977, that, the Special Agent of the FBI
knows through statements made by DANIEL GREENE and personal
observation that for approximately two years prior to his death,
DANIEL GREENE resided at 15500 Lake Shore Boulevard, Cleveland,
Ohio.
34. RAYMOND VILLIAM FERRITTO continued to advise that on Monday
or Tuesday, the first week in October, 1977, FERRITTO received
a telephone call from RONALD CARADMA insisting that he eoee
to Struihert, Ohio, to CARARBIA's vrnSirg coepany. at soeethlng
very important was up. drove to Struthers. Chio. ard
vat taker by CARAS3CA to a lake, believed to be Mosg’.^.ite Lake,
near Karrer., Ohio. FESRirro stated that this was an exclusive
area and that you needed a plastic card to get through the gate and
had boats and yachts along dockside. FE.RRITTO was taken to a boat
believed to belong to a doctor where he met with JAMES LICAVOLI , aka
11
399
Jack Khite, JOHN CAuSBrA, RONALD CARABDIA, aka.'?^R.C., PASQUALE
CISTERNINO, oka., Dutchie, and ANGELO LONARDO, aka., Big Ange.
35, FERRITTO advised that although the name of ANGELO LONARDO
was familiar to him, this was the first time he had met LONARDO.
On the boat, which was not taken out into the lake, a full,
discussion about the need to kill DANIEL GREENE took place
with all those on the boat actively participating. Further,
FERRITTO stated that he advised all those in attendance that he
was dissatisfied with the lack of support he was receiving and
that he did not wish to continue in his attempts to locate and
kill DANIEL GREENE. In response to this, all those in attendance
including ANGELO LONARDO advised him to continue his efforts and
attempt to satisfy the contract. A tape recording taken from the
GREENE wiretap was played, and it was noted that GREENE was to have
a dental appointment with a dentist on Thursday, October 6, 1977.
FERRITTO agreed to attempt to kill GREENE .if he kept his dental
appointment.
36. On October 6, 1977, Special Agents of the FBI were advised
by Doctor ALFONSO A. ROSSI, 29001 Cedar Road, Lyndhurst, Ohio,
that DANIEL GREENE kept a dentist appointment with Doctor Rossi
at 2:00 PM pn October 6, 1977.
\37. FERRITTO further advised that on Wednesday, October 5, 1977
FERRITTO drove the 1973 blue Plymouth previously furnished
him by PASQUALE CISTERNIKO and ALFRED CALABRESE to Cleveland, Ohio,
where he was met by CISTERNIKO and taken to an apartment located
near the Bishop Road exit off Interstate 90. This apartment
building was described by rCRRZTTO as a higho-rise with a fountain
in the entrance way sne! the apartment number was 333. This
apartnent bullying was near a ColU Circle benarteenc itere.
31. Ca 1. affiart ear aJ^lsa^: by Jpe-ria*.
•rr rst. ih-at e*- be«e!-!b«r 13*«, ha pro€«eC«Ai to winchaster
Aparts-entt. 274C3 Char:lon Road, wnioughby Mill*, Onlo,
which is located rear the Bishop Road exit off 3-90. Located at
this address is a 12-story apartment building with a fountain in
the lobby. Personal observation by Special Agent BAKER revealed
that apartment number 333 in that building is listed to Z. KA'LKAN .
400
Special Agent BAKER further advised that a Gold Circle Department
Store is located less than a half mile from the location of the
apartment.
A review of records of the FBI, Cleveland Division,
revealed that on September 17, 1975, PASQUALE J, CISTERNINO also
known as "Butchie", and 20LT0N KALMAN, aka., Zolt, were both
convicted in Federal District Court, Northern District of Ohio,
12-A
401
before Federal District Court Judge THOt^S LW-iBROS in connection with
%
the operation of a gambling business located at the Library Club,
Murray Hill Road, Cleveland, Ohio.
39. FERRITTO further advised that PASQUALE CIS TERMING left
FERRITTO in this apartment over the night of October 5, 1977.
CISTERNINO returned to this apartment on Thursday, October C, ' ^
1977, with dynamite, switches, and other electronic equipment.
CISTERNINO assembled a bomb in the presence of FERRITTO and
explained in a step*-by-step procedure how the "package** would be
detonated by a remote control switch. FERRITTO and CISTERNINO
left the apartment and CISTERNINO showed FERRITTO a Chevrolet
Nova which had the door altered by someone who had welded a thick
metal box in the door. CISTERNINO explained that this would work
as a blast director similar to the box previously placed In front
of the GREENE apartment building. The bomb package was carried
in a shopping bag, and CISTERNINO drove the Nova and led FERRITTO
and the Plymouth to the parking area of the office building
which housed GREENE's dentist.
40. The Chevrolet^ Nova was parked nearby, and CISTERNINO and
FErJiittO watched for GREENE to enter the parking area. GREENE /
was not seen driving into the parking area, but was observed
exiting an automobile and walking into the building where the
dentist's office was located. FERRITTO drove the Nova and parked
it in an adjacent spot to the automobile GREENE had been observed
exiting. CISTERNINO and FERRITTO loaded the bomb package into
the welded box in the door of the Nova and 'armed the bomb by
switching a switch to the on position.
. 41. FERRITTO then drove the 1973 blue Plymouth adjacent to a tele-
phone booth where CISTERNINO pretended to be using the telephone.
From that vantage point, FERRITTO and CISTERNINO observed the
parking area waiting for GREENE to exit the building. When
GREENE was observed approaching his car, CISTERNINO entered the
back seat of the 1973 Plymouth and FERRITTO slowly pulled out
into traffic. As GREENE entered his automobile, CISTERNINO
detonated the bomb contained in the door of the Nova by activating
/
13
402
the area and returned to the apartment where CISTERNINO was
"dropped off" and FERRITTO returned to Elrie^ Pennsylvania.
42. On Saturday, October 8, 1977, FERRITTO met with JACK WHITE
in Warren, Ohio, where WHITE’S promise of making FERRITTO a
"member" was reiterated and WHITE said, "Now things maybe will
settle down and we can make a buck." ^ -*
43. During July, August, September and early October, 1977, on
four or five separate occasions FERRITTO met with THOMAS SINITO
at the Denny's Restaurant located on Euclid Avenue, adjacent ^
to Interstate 90, On these occasions, according to FERRITTO,
he and SINITO discussed the tape recordings being furnished to
him by JOHN CALANDRA and PASQUALE CISTERNINO. FERRITTO advised
that he complained to SINITO that the tape recordings made
from DANIEL GREENE'S telephone were ineffective since they were
coming to hun (FERRITTO) late, and he was unable to utilize them
in his efforts to locate and kill DANIEL GREENE. In response
SINITO advised FERRITTO that the tapes were under the control
of ANGELO LONARDO and it was only after LONARDO listened to them
that they were released for FERRITTO 's use. According to FERRITTO
he told THOMAS SINITO on an occasion shortly before the GREENE '
bombing that he did not want to do the job since he was getting j
no support, and he was unable to formulate a suitable plan to
locate and murder GREENE. On this occasion, SINITO insisted •
that FERRITTO continue his efforts since, according to SINITO, ^
DANIEL GREENE was attempting to locate and kill SINITO.
44. RAYMOND WILLIAM FERRITTO further advised that in early
August, 1977, he attended the funeral of ANTHONY DELSANTER
in Warren, Ohio. There he met and conversed with JIMT4Y FRATIANO,
who was also in attendance. FRATIANO asked FERRITTO how he was
progressing in helping to solve Cleveland's problem. FERRITTO
advised FRATIANO that things were not going well. Specifically,
he told FRATIANO ' that he (FERRITTO) was not receiving the
support from the Cleveland family that he had been told would
be given.
14
403
45. FERRITTO further^dviSGd that on August 24,^^977, he
came to Cleveland, Ohio, and met with JIMMY FRATIAMO, THOMAS RICCIARDI
MICHAEL RIZZITELLI, also known as Mike Rizzo, MILTON HOLT, and
ARCHIE ANDRIANO at a motel which he believes to be the Ramada
Inn on Brookpark Road near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. ,
FERRITTO advised that this was primarily a social meeting; however,
there was some discussion of JACK WHITE'S ^problem.*’ .
404
45a. On December 4, 1977, RAYMOND FERRITTO advised a
Special Agent of , the FBI, who in turn advised the affiant, that in
order to listen to the cassette tape recordings furnished to him
by JOHN CALANDRA and EUTCHIE CISTERNINO, he purchased a
cassette tape recorder sometime subsequent to the early part of
August, 1977. FERRITTO -advised that he purchased this tape recorder,
manufacturer unknown, at what he believed to be the Uncle Bill's
discount store on Lake Shore Boulevard, approximately seven or
eight blocks east of the residence of a girl friend of DANNY GREENE.
FERRITTO advised that he paid between $23 and $33 for this unit
and recalled that it was black and measured approximately 6"x8"x2"*
He further advised that this unit could be operated on both standard
AC current and batteries. FERRITTO further advised that after
receiving several of the tape recordings he was unable to determine
what was being said on these recordings through this machine as the
speed of the recording was not compatible with the playback on his
machine. FERRITTO stated that he discussed this problem with
BUTCHIE CISTERNINO who subsequently advised him that he would discuss
the problem with-€Wttfc25J* MARCONI to "see what the problem is."
FERRITTO advised that sometime later he met BUTCHIE ^
CISTERNINO at the residence of RONALD CARABBlS^in Struthers, Ohio,
at which time CISTERNINO gave him another tape recorder similar
in sire, but he recalled that this one was manufacturer ed
FERRITTO further stated that he utilized this tape recorder through
the AC current at his hotel rooms which he utilized at the Ramada
Inn, the Sheraton Inn, and the Holiday Inn, all in the vicinity of
Euclid Avenue and Interstate 90 on the eastern outskirts of
Cleveland, Ohio.
16
405
45(b) FERRITTO further advised that he was told by JOHN
CAIAKDRA that JACK WHITE would review soroe of the tapes
at his (JACK WHITE* s) Jt>rother's house at Warren, Ohio. ^
Investigation conducted by other special agents of the FBI,
who in turn have advised the affiant, that JACK WHITE *s brother,
JOHN LICAVOLI, lives at 1365 Westwood Avenue, Warren, Ohio.
Special Agents of the FBI have seen JACK WHITE at his
brother's residence as recently as October 13, 1977.
17
406
46, On Deceniber 4 , 1977, affiant was advised by other Special
Agents of the FBI that on August 10, 1977, United States District
Court Judge ROBERT SCHNACPIZ, NOrthern District of California,
entered an order authorizing the interception of wire concnunica-
tions over telephone number (415) 441-9580 for a thirty day period.
47. Pursuant to that Order, agents of the Safi Francisco,
California Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation iconitored
telephone calls to and from telephone number (415) 441-9580.
On August 23, 1977, at 5:48* PM, Pacific Daylight Time, the
following telephone conversation was monitored. The individual
referred to as FRANK in the following transcription has been
identified by Special Agents of the FBI, San Francisco Division,
as FRANK VELOTTA and the individual referred to as JIMMY in the
following transcription has been identified by Special Agents
of the San Francisco Division as JIMMY FRATIANO.
FRANK Nothing. We're just tal)cing. Where am I at —
^ I*m in Cleveland, where do you thin)c I'm at?
RON
(unintelligible) how's the weather?
FRANK
How's the weather, it's always nice
1
over here.
RON
1
How's business?
FRANK
Huh?
RON
How's business?
FRANK
‘ How's business? Bad.
RON
(unintelligible)
FRANK
Huh? All right, why?
RON
(unintelligible)
PRANK
Jesus Christ, my my, hey that guy's
wait a scco.nd.
coming in, uh.
JXKiY
How's it going?
RON
All rig.ht.
ojyyr
(laughs) KCv's evcryihir-g going?
RON
All right
Ji>o:v
Huh?
RON
All right.
JIMJ-IY
Yeah.
407
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIM^^Y
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIMMY
RON
JIWTf
Rc::
jtrmr
lcC>
RON
JIMMY
RON
Yeah.
Listen, I'm going to be in tomorrow night at 5:10
Up above .
Tell Archie to pick me up.
Does he know where?
Kell, he knows where, yeah, you know that, that .
airport over there.
Yeah.
The big one.
Oh, yeah.
At 5:10, Tell him I'm coming in United.
United, 5:10, tomorrow afternoon.
Yeah. ^
Okay 7
All right
Yeah, that.'s fine.
Get a hold of that friend, yoU know,
(unintelligible) yeah, well, he'll be there.
The dark guy.
Huh?
The dark guy.
Yeah. '
Kill he be there? *
Yeah. .
All right. He'll be there and we'll go right to
his place.
(unintclligiblo)
To his house, you understa.-ad?
RUht
Cn, eX-»y, 1*» to hjve seeieboOy with ee.
All right?
Yeah.
0)cay. Where is our friend fron Erie?
He'll be with me tomorrow.
19
408
JiMf-lY Will he? ^
RON Yeah.
I
JIMMY Okay, then, uh. . ,
RON (unintelligible) ARCHIE ’ll let you know, you know?
JIMMY Okay, then, we’ll get a hold of you sometime tomorrow
night.
RON He'll know where we're at.
JIMT4Y Well, Why don't, why don't he come in town?
RON Be is.
JIMMY Huh?‘
RON He is.
JIMMY Tomorrow?
RON Yeah
JIMMY Okay, then. I'll be over there then.
RON Okay.
JIMMY All right, buddy.
RON All right.
JIMMY Bye.
48. The above telephone call was outgoing from (415) 441<'9580.
The individual on the receiving end of, the call referred to in
the transcript as RON, is believed to be RONALD CARABBIA. The
telephone number called, according to a mechanical device which
was installed pursuant to an order of Judge SCKKACKE on
August 10, 1977, the purpose of which was to identify the
telephone numbers called from the monitored telephone, was
(216) 755-9585. Records of the Ohio Bell telephone Company and
independent investigation by the Federal Bureau of .Investigation
Indicate that (216) 755-9585 is a non-published listing to
RONALD CARABBIA, 2277 Knollvood Drive, Struthers, Ohio, formerly
124 Knollwood Drive, Struthers, Ohio-
49. On August 24, 1977, a physical surveillance conducted by
Special Agents of the FBI, the results of which were made known
to the affiant, revealed that JAMES FRATIANO arrived at
Cleveland, Ohio, from San Francisco, California via United
409
Airlines flight number 72. FRATIANO was accompanied by other
individuals and was met by ARCHIE ANDREANO, *
.21
410
50, Affiant states that from August 24, 1977, until
October 10, 1977, a twenty-four hour surveillance was conducted
in the vicinity of 12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio, by
Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the results
of which were made known to affiant which revealed the following:
September 2, 1977
10:58 p.m. - JAMES LICAVOLI, aka., Jack White, arrives at
12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio, on foot from the
direction of Murray Hill Avenue and enters the side
door of tliat residence.
11:47 p.m. - A white male, balding, driving a white vinyl over light
blue General Motors product, bearing current Ohio
license *DZ 653, parks in the driveway of 12301 Fairview
Court. The driver exits the vehicle and enters the
residence.
September 3, 1977
12:10 'a.m. White male driver of DZ 653 exits the residence,
. enters DZ 653 and exits the area.
September 4^ 1977
12:22 p.m.,- A white over blue Cadillac, current Ohio license DZ 653> •
. parks in the driveway of 12301 Fairview Court. A white
male, white hair, balding with a red shirt, believed
from previous observation of photographs to be identical
to JOHN CAIAKDRA, exits DZ 653 and enters the residence.
12:31 p.m. - JAMES LICAVOLI, aka.. Jack White, exits 12301 Fairview
Court, Cleveland, Ohio, and enters the passenger side of
DZ 653 at the same time the individual believed to be
JOHN CALANDRA exits the residence and enters the
driver's side of DZ 653. CALAIOPA and LICAVOLI are
observed exiting the area. A check of the Law Enforcenen
Automated Data System by Special Agent GEORGE £. GROTZ
on September 4 , 1977 , revealed that current Ohio license
DZ 653 is listed to the Royal Machine Tool Company,
700 East 163rd Street, Cleveland, Ohio, on a 1976
Cadillac, four-door sedan. Investigation conducted by
411
Other Special Agents in the FBI , who in turn have
advised Special Agent GROTZ , who has advised affiant,
revealed that the President of Koyal Machine and Tool •
Company is JOHN PHILLIP CALANDRA who, according to the most
recent published records, resides at 700 Quillians,
Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Further, Special Agent GROTZ
advised affiant that a spot check of the residence
at 700 Quilliams conducted by other Special Agents of
the FBI, wht in turn advised Special Agent GROTZ, revealed
that between the hours of C;20 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. , on
September A, 1977, the white over blue Cadillac, bearing
current Ohio license DZ 'SS3, was observed parked in the
driveway of the residence at 700 Quilliaiw , Cleveland
t
Heights , Ohio.
October 7, 1977
12:50 p.m. - JACK WHITE is observed to enter the residence of
: 12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio.
f
1:36 p.m. - JOHN CALANDRA arrives at 12301 Fairview Court on foot.
4:45 p.m. - CALANDRA exits 12301 Fairview Court.
October 8, 1977
10:53 p.m. - JACK WHITE is observed to enter the residence of
12301 raisviev Court.
11|45 a.m. • JOHN CALANDRA is observed to enter tho residoneo.
2i2l p.». - CALANDXX iS Observed to leave the residence.
October *•
a.». - JXTS wxm is Obeefved le •••-•r tbe residence Of XJ>71
relrvis^ .
e.e. - JDC"* C-tULsesA la ©oeermui to on^ef tn* residence,’
3*5; p.». - CAtJUCOiJV le ea^eerv^J le en 11 lA- reslden.?*.
SI. On Xu^vet 24. 1177, Chief Jud^e DDOnc J. mxrtXfTI,
United States District Court, KortneVn District of Ohio, entered
an order authorizing interception of oral concnunications occurring
in the premises located at 12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio,
— for thirtv-day period. -23-
412
52. At 1:35 p.m., September 24, 1977, JAMES T. LICAVOLI ,
also known as Jack White, was observed in front of the residence at
12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio, exiting a yellow Cadillac
automobile bearing current Ohio license plates NK 860. He was then
immediately observed entering the residence of 12301 Fairview Court,
Cleveland, Ohio, by the side entrance. On September 24, 1977,
according to other Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
who in turn advised the affiant, at 7:17 p.m., a white male entered
the residence of 12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio. This individual
was described as being approximately 55 years old, 5 *8" to 5* 9", 150
pounds, thin, gray hair. At 7:19 p.m., a white male, identified by
the surveilling Agents as STEVE CALA, departed the residence of
12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio. At 7:38 p.m., PAUL A.
CZRICILLO, also known as Paul Lish, departed the residence of
12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio, and entered a white Ford
n>, current Ohio license AO 7047, which at the time was parked in
the driveway of the residence. LISH was observed exiting the area
in this vehicle.
53. On September 24, 1977, between the hours of 7:31 p.m,
and 8:17 p.m., the following conversation between two individuals
was intercepted at 12301 Fairview Court, Cleveland, Ohio. Special
Agent GEORGE E. GROTZ states that he has reviewed this conversation
in excess of 25 times and advises the 'affiant that the following is
the truest account of that conversation:
■JOHNNY NARDI...that cocksucker . , . if the guy. ..is good,
you know we* 11 send a letter to the police department telling them
what do you want...best forget about it. You know, the only mistake
I made is when I left my man out at the Xnnerbelt. . .1 should never
have told JOHNNY about it...Z shoulda gone ahead and done it myself
and... who the hell is gonna hassle a cop? Nobody. Kids. That's
the way... you wanna be honest and ah... how the hell did this guy
ever come in the picture. . .you can't get near him. ..they got permits
to carry guns... you know the Irish. If ho says I'll be there at
24
413
three o’clock. . ,vho gives a shit. You wait, you wait and wait and
you get tired of waiting. He don’t keep no time... he goes down...
in the wintertime he goes to...Oh» he's gotta make a mistake. He
gotta go sometime. I hope he goes back to Texas so they can hill
him. Where? Texas. . .cocksuckcrs on the VJest Side, they all go with
him. You know them...KC TAGGART and all. That guy who used to work
for you at the barbut gome.. He don't go with 'em. You know that guy...
that you're the one who give the job. No he was working with us.
I mean you're the one who give the job out... what's his name. . .yeah. . •
he used to work for FRAI^K...hc used to work for the barbut game...
JOHN NARDI’s the one who opened the barbut gome. He said, boy, the
Irishman wanted to give me a piece... 1 don't want nothing. You get the
idea tlie lie they was... you know when he was talking to you. • .NARDI. ..he
irauld never look at you. He was a phoney motherfucker .. .He got to
smirking. He never did try to get in touch with them little what's his ^
name, TONY... tells me you want anything done, you get a hold of JACK.
TONY DEI.SANTER. . .before 'he used to play golf he was a phoney mother-
fucker .. .yeah, it all comes back to you... what arc you gonna do with •
* y
any kind of guy., .he coulda^ he was going to get in^ too. He had *
something on his mind... I don't know what he had on his mind. He had
something on his fuckin mind. Maybe it was not the bombing. • .shook
everybody down. . .killed a lot of people..."
54. On September 29, 1977, Special Agent THOMAS J.
WILSON observed a photograph of JOHN PUILLI? CALANDRA and advised
that the Individual identified as JOir^ PHILLIP CAL7CJDKA in the photo-
graph, to the best of his knowledge, anpears to be identical to the
individual who entered the residence of 12301 rairvlcw Court, Clovoland*
Ohio, at 7;17 p.n.. on Septee^ber 24, 1777.
55. AfCiant further sta-c« he has reviewed the
surv«i:ia.-vre lo; thr aU.*rw infor^-atlon ani, based upon a
review of that lor, states th^t J.VC.5 7. LtCAVOL* , also known as
Jack White, and the individual identified as JOir: nilLLlP CAUC:0RA
were the only individuals in the residence at the time the above-
described conversations took place*
25 -
35-379 0 - 79 - 27
414
56. Special Agent GEOncE.E. GROTZ advised the affiant
that based upon personal investigation and investigation conducted
by other Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who
have in turn advised Special' Agent GROTZ, that the following
statements summarize the above conversation set out in paragraph S3.
JAMES X. LICAVOLI, also known as Jack White, and the
individual identified as JOHN PHILLIP CALAITDRA are initially
discussing JOHN N?^I, both of them speaking in derogatory terms
of NAJIDI. There is reason to believe they are discussing their
involvement in the bombing of JOHN NARDI on Kay 17, 1977, when the
conversation, "You know the only mistake I made is when I left my*
man out at the Inncrbelt. 1 should never have told JOIH^IY about
it... I shoulda gone ahead and done it myself and.. .who the hell is
gonna hassle a cop?" is overheard. Both JAMES T. LICAVOLI, also
)cnovn as Jack White, and the individual identified as JOHN PHILLI^
CALAJJDRA then discuss "the Irishman" and that they believe that
"the Irish" have permits ^to carry guns. It is also clear to the
« ^ 0
affiant that 'JAKES X. LICAVOLI, also known as Jack White, and the
%
individual identified as JOHII PHILLIP CALANDRA are discussing the
possibility that "the Irishman" will "make a mistake" and "he
gotta go sometime." These statements arc believed by the affi 2 mt
to be a reference to an ^mticipated trip by "the Irishman" to
Texas, and the phrase, "I hope he goes back to Texas so they can
kill him" is heard and is believed to refer to associates of
JAMES T. LICAVOLI.
The preceding paragraphs. It is submitted, sets forth
probable cause to believe that JAMES 7. LICA%*OLI . also known aa
Jack White; JAMES T- aiao knevr. as 'Woaarl;* JOH:; k. CALAM^AA
ANCriO >c::ALO J. CISTTP-NlNO. alto k.nown as
•Culc.Me;" T15Er.\S JA'CE SINtTO; P-\T?T^;;3 W. rEF’lTTO, and AlTAEO S.
CAL-'JJrrsr, also known as “Allle" and others ac yet unknown, are
associated in fact in an enterprise as defined in Title 18, United
States Code, Section 1961 (4) , the activities of which affect
\
26
415
Mr, Cornwell, Much of what you told us, Mr, Salerno, relates to
the prohibition era, which, of course, we may be familiar with from
television, A1 Capone, Elliot Ness, that sort of thing. You also
mentioned the FBI just last year filed an affidavit indicating the
existence then of the same phenomenon. However, we are most
interested in the 1960’s, the early 1960's, What evidence is there
during that period that the La Cosa Nostra was a viable entity?
Mr, Salerno. Well, the Apalachin meeting that I mentioned
certainly raised some 1,000 questions in the minds of the public,
the press, in the minds of the police and in the minds of other
Government officials. I think in the 20 years since that occurrence
we have answered many of those questions. One of the reactions
that took place in Government as a result of the Apalachin meet-
ing was a reaction within the FBI. At the suggestion of Mr. Clyde
Tolson, Director Hoover commissioned their research unit to pre-
pare two monographs, one on the Mafia in Sicily; the second on the
Mafia within the United States.
Mr. Hoover also caused to be created within the FBI something
that came to be known as the top hoodlum program. The first
targets were the people at the Apalachin meeting, but it was not
restricted to them; it was expanded to include many of their crimi-
nal associates. That was an ongoing program in which the various
field offices of the FBI throughout the United States were required
to assign personnel to keep abreast of these criminals, their activi-
ties, of course, with a point of view of possible prosecution, but
certainly with an intelligence gathering operation to find out more
about them, what they were doing and what could be done about it.
Mr. Cornwell. By 1963, had the FBI reached any conclusions as
to the scope of La Cosa Nostra on a national level?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; very definitely. The top hoodlum program in
1961 with the advent of the Kennedy administration under the
leadership of Robert Kennedy as the Attorney General, somewhat
escalated programs throughout the Department of Justice and in
other Federal agencies.
In the files of the FBI, you will note that it is at that time period
where the top hoodlum program becomes something else, it is then
labeled the criminal intelligence program. There is in the file
under the date of June 21, 1961, a directive from Mr. Hoover to 10
field offices of the FBI to create special squads where the total
assignments of the agents will be to the development of inform-
ants, people who can tell them about this particular criminal orga-
nization.
The FBI had, under its top hoodlum program in 1959, begun the
installation of some electronic surveillances. The files of the FBI
reflect that on such an electronic surveillance where the target was
Sam Giancana in Chicago that he is making some reference back
to this Apalachin meeting. He indicates that there is in existence a
small control group that establishes policy and makes decisions.
The electronic surveillance indicates that he, himself, is a member
of that group. He uses the term “the commission,'' to describe that
^oup. He names a number of other people who have membership
in the commission. That caused the opening of a file in the FBI
which was initially labeled “The Commission, et al." That is the
same file that I have made reference to under its current title La
416
Cosa Nostra file. That file was begun in 1959. So we have some 20
years of evidence gathering, a great deal of escalation, more elec-
tronic surveillances in 1961 than there may have been prior to
that. Certainly the application of greater resources of manpower
are manifest in the files of the FBI.
Confidential sources of information in FBI files are labeled by
numbers, CH-T-1. CH designates the field office of Chicago. T-1
would be an important and principal source of information in that
file in the Chicago area. You can see a great expansion of the T
numbers, the number of sources that the FBI is getting informa-
tion from in that file expands greatly in 1961. So that by 1963, the
FBI has a very complete and a very accurate picture of who is
doing what and where they are doing it. I would suggest to you,
and for the consideration of this committee, that the picture that
the FBI had and could have in 1963 is greater than that which we
probably have today.
Mr. Cornwell. You have caused an exhibit to be made so that
you can illustrate the conclusions that the FBI had reached by
1963; is that correct?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I do.
Mr. Cornwell. We have marked that as JFK exhibit F-547B for
identification. May we have that displayed and admitted into the
record at this time, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[JFK exhibit F-547B was marked for identification and entered
into the record.]
JFK Exhibit F-547B
417
Mr. Salerno. Mr. Cornwell, could we have the other one, the La
Stella meeting?
Mr. Cornwell. May we have JFK exhibit F-550 also admitted
into the record at this time?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it will be entered into the
record at this point.
[JFK exhibit F-550 was admitted into the record.]
418
Seating Arrangement at La Stella
I September 22, 1966
Mike Miranda
Joseph
Columbo
Tommy Eboli
Dominick
Alongi
Joseph
Marcello, Jr.
Aniello
Dellacroce
1
■
y
1
&
-1_L
1
5r
1
n
1
L_
—
-
Carlo Gambino
Carlos Marcello
Santo
Trafficante, Jr.
Anthony Carolla
Frank Qagliano
Joseph N. Gallo
Anthony Carlllo
JFK Exhibit F-550
Mr. Cornwell. Perhaps, Mr. Salerno, if you could, would you
explain what conclusions the FBI came to by 1963 based upon the
419
extensive program of surveillance, physical, and electronic that you
just described?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; this is the map of the United States. The
various locations show where the FBI established that organized
crime families, which is the term used for the particular subdivi-
sions within this criminal syndicate and representing in themselves
criminal syndicates. The people whose names and photographs
appear across the top are the people serving on the control body
known as the commission in 1963.
Thomas Lucchese in New York City; Joseph Zerilli in Detroit,
Raymond Patriarca in Providence; Joseph Bonnano of New York
City; Stefano Maggadino of Buffalo; Carlo Gambino of New York
City; Sam Giancana of Chicago; Vito Genovese of New York City;
and Mr. Trafficante’s associate, Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia.
The other photos are those of family leaders. You will note Mr.
Carlos Marcello here in New Orleans. Mr. Santos Trafficante given
as the leader of La Cosa Nostra family in Tampa. I call to your
attention the fact that every one of the areas represented at the
Apalachin meeting is an area from whence they came.
Mr. Cerrito of San Jose is known to have been at the Apalachin
meeting. Mr. Licata's predecessor in Los Angeles, De Simone, was
at that meeting. Mr. Colletti of Colorado was at that meeting. Mr.
Civella of Kansas City was at that meeting. Mr. Civello of Dallas
was at that meeting. Mr. Giardano of St. Louis was at that meet-
ing. Mr. Marcello was not identified as being at that meeting.
Later FBI intelligence indicates that he was represented in that
instance by his brother whose photograph is on the next exhibit.
Mr. Trafficante, using the name of Louis Santos was at that
meeting. Mr. Scalish was at that meeting. Mr. La Rocca was at
that meeting. Mr. Bufalino was at that meeting. Mr. Colombo's
predecessor, dead by 1963, was at that meeting. Mr. Bruno's prede-
cessor, Joseph Ida of Philadelphia was at that meeting, but shortly
thereafter he couldn't take the heat and he decided to get out of
the kitchen and moved to Italy for permanent residence, therefore,
making a seat open and Mr. Bruno succeeded him in that position.
Mr. Genovese was at that meeting. Mr. Giancana described his
attendance at that meeting; Mr. Gambino was at that meeting; Mr.
Maggadino of Buffalo, although that is some distance from Apala-
chin, N.Y., his sphere of influence reaches there and he was consid-
ered to be the host of that particular meeting. Mr. Bonnano was at
that meeting. Mr. Patriarca was at that meeting. Mr. Zerilli never
got to the meeting. He got as far as Binghamton, N.Y., where the
FBI established that he rented an automobile. It was his drivers
license that was used, it was his signature that rented the auto-
mobile. He probably heard of the aborting of the meeting while en
route and did not return to Binghamton but returned the car to a
Hertz office in Brooklyn and then went back home. So there is no
question that it is this organization that was having a meeting
back in 1957, by 1963, that's an established fact that I don't consid-
er debatable. They established that there were families, that this
was the ruling body of the commission, that those families that do
not have a leader who is on the commission can have their inter-
ests represented for them before the commission.
420
The Milwaukee family, Madison, Rockford are really considered
to be satellites to the Chicago organization. So it is the leader from
Chicago who would represent their interests. On the far west coast
we know that the southern California family would be represented
on the commission through Mr. Lucchese; San Francisco and San
Jose represented on the commission by Mr. Bonnano.
The FBTs knowledge was very, very complete. Their establish-
ment of the group, hierarchical structure and methodology was
complete. I mentioned the La Stella restaurant. I would like to
point out for the committee that the seating arrangement here —
there were, of course, no seating cards on that luncheon table — yet,
the seating arrangement is as formal as it could be if the Chief of
Protocol for the State Department had, in fact, put place cards
there. Mr. Mike Miranda is at the top
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Salerno, before you tell us about the particu-
lar seating arrangement, the committee may not be familiar with
the background of that meeting and how it was discovered and the
extent it was discovered. Would you just give them a brief back-
ground?
Mr. Salerno. I think that meeting was discovered and how it
was discovered is a very fine example of good police intelligence
work. Mr. Lucchese one of the leaders of one of the five families
located in the city of New York had been stricken and taken ill.
We were able to learn that the prognosis was very bad for him,
that he had an inoperable brain cancer and could not be expected
to live more than 3 to 6 months, which turned out to be the case in
fact. The assignment given within my unit was ''OK, if what we
believe is true and he is, in fact, the leader of a Cosa Nostra family,
what should happen next?'' We felt that we could determine that
some people would have to do different things, the people who
ordinarily, the very limited number of people who would meet with
and report to the family leader would now have to report to some-
one else. So one intelligence target was who will that next person
be. And we were able to come up with a very well educated guess
which, over a period of years, was a sound one.
We established that Mr. Carmine Tramunti would be the leader
of that family. I might add Mr. Tramunti is now in Federal prison
doing a 15-year term for dealing in heroin.
The second prognosis that was made, the projection from analy-
sis was that if, as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had
determined, that the methodology is that when one family leader
passes on or is no longer the family leader, that the person who
will be nominated from within his family group must have the
advice and consent of this board before that nomination is, in fact,
confirmed, that there would have to be a meeting of top leadership
people in La Cosa Nostra. What we did in the New York City
Police Department was target several people who would most
likely attend such a meeting.
One of them was the host here, Mike Miranda. He was at that
time one of the troika who was minding the store for Vito Geno-
vese doing time for heroin. We decided to watch Mike. It was while
we were in the process of doing that, that we saw him go to this
restaurant. We saw Mr. Carlo Gambino arrive with an associate,
Joseph Gallo. Fortunately, one of the young officers assigned to
421
that had seen Mr. Trafficante on one occasion and knew him by
sight. When he saw an out of town leader he immediately did what
all good cops do, you call the boss and find out what you should do.
We contacted the prosecutor who indicated that he had a current
matter before a grand jury where these people could very well offer
some evidence or advice to the deliberations of that grand jury.
He instructed us to bring them all in so that they could be made
material witnesses, and that was done.
I recall that the court fixed the sum of $100,000 bail for each of
the 13, and a bail bondsman came in in very short order and posted
$1.3 million bail. He was asked to inform the court for the record
what collateral, if any, he had obtained and he said that he was
out on the limb for $1.3 million on the basis of their promise to
pay.
Mr. Cornwell. So after feeling there must have been a meeting
coming, you went to the restaurant and you found the individuals
inside seated in a pattern that is demonstrated by the exhibit?
Mr. Salerno. Exactly as it is shown here, he is an acting family
leader and was the host, so he sits at the top of the table. Those
people on his immediate right and left, Carlos Marcello, Santos
Trafficante, Tommy Eboli, Joseph Columbo, Carlo Gambino are
family leaders. It would appear those on the next level of hierarchy
sit at the other end of the table. This is Anthony Carolla.
In all likelihood he is the person who would pick up the check.
The bosses never pay when these people get together. It is always
the henchmen. This man is the underboss to Carlo Gambino. This
man is the counselor to Carlo Gambino. Those peers are sitting
together here.
This is Anthony Carolla and a complaint that he might have had
with Mr. Marcello is one of the best educated guesses as to the
reason for the meeting. This gentleman is from New Orleans and
this is Mr. Marcello's brother. Dominick Alongi usually drives
Tommy Eboli. He is probably here because he is Frank Gagliano's
cousin and this is an opportunity for him to reunite.
Mr. Cornwell. You told us what the conclusions were of the FBI
by 1963 as to the national configuration of the Cosa Nostra, and
you told us that the conclusions appear to you to be very reliable,
having been based on physical and electronic surveillance. Would
you tell us in more detail what the nature of that electronic
surveillance was?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir. In the staff work that was done for the
committee we know that the electronic surveillance was national
in scope. We know that there were electronic surveillances in the
State of California. We know that there were electronic surveil-
lances in the Middle West. We know that there were electronic
surveillances in New England and a great many in the New York
and New Jersey areas, as well as the one that I read to you, which
shows coverage of some kind in the State of Florida.
The electronic surveillance was national in scope.
There is a development of live informants, that program became
known as the TE informants — top echelon informants. I have been
able to determine from my analysis of the records in which it is
indicated that a top echelon informant would be considered to be a
person who was in fact himself a member of the organization. So
422
that the FBI was able in a relatively short period of time to “turn
around'' people, was the professional expression used, and their
information was coming from directly within the organization by
people who were themselves members.
In addition to that, I think we would add that, the FBI main-
tained liaison with other Federal agencies that had interests in
these individuals and the many local police departments, so that
there was an accumulation of a great deal of data upon which they
could establish their findings.
Mr. Cornwell. With respect to the electronic surveillances, are
you aware of any official statement that the Department of Justice
or the FBI had made concerning the scope and use of an electronic
surveillance during that period?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir. I have an excerpt from a submission that
was made by the Department of Justice in a legal matter. The case
was Black v. The United States ^ which was being heard by the
Supreme Court. At that time, it was indicated in a memorandum
filed by the Department of Justice, I am quoting now:
Under departmental practice in effect for a period of years prior to 1963, and
continuing into 1965, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was given
authority to approve the installation of devices such as that in question for intelli-
gence and not evidentiary purposes, when required in the interests of internal
security, including organized crime, kidnapings and matters wherein human life
might be at stake.
Mr. Cornwell. You told us about the extent of the surveillance
and the conclusions of the FBI, but more specifically, is there
direct evidence which was obtained from the surveillance which
would specifically confirm the existence of La Cosa Nostra during
the time period?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I think what was then a unique occurrence
that took place in 1963, enabled us in our research work to see that
very clearly.
In April of 1963, there was a member of the Carlo Gambino La
Cosa Nostra family named Carmine Lombardozzi, His father had
passed away, and as was not unusual in those days, law enforce-
ment people were going to cover the wake and the funeral to see
what kind of intelligence they might gather from who came, who
opened the car door for whom, who jumped up and gave his seat to
the other guy, and that type of thing.
As the funeral cortege was entering the church for appropriate
services, one FBI man, who was present on the scene, with an
attache case, that was in fact a camera, was assaulted by two
young men, or three young men, who broke from the funeral
cortege. The FBI man was assaulted while he lay on the ground
with both fists and feet. His weapon was taken from him and the
youths joined the group of people walking into the church.
There were some negotiations with the pastor of that church,
and he asked for 10 minutes to look into the matter and he came
out with the FBI man's pistol, which was returned to proper au-
thority.
That occurrence was rather unique. It seems to be a break in
well-established, understood, though never spoken or written rules.
The rule seemed to be between law enforcement and people in
organized crime that we were all total professionals and that no
423
feelings were to be personalized. Therefore, law enforcement in-
volved in that field would consider it an abrogation of the rules if
some personal animosity were directed at themselves, members of
their family, and organized crime expected the same thing. They
expected their wives and their children not to be bothered in any
way by law enforcement unless they were engaged in criminal
activity. That was a detente. It was an understanding which
seemed to have been broken.
That was a matter of some concern to people in the FBI and
other law enforcement people, that were aware of the thing.
What followed I think we can get right from the lips of people
involved in organized crime.
I have three electronic surveillances which will indicate what
resulted therefrom, and more important, it will show you a commu-
nications network around the United States. That single occur-
rence and what followed is going to be described to you now from
three electronic surveillances, one in Brooklyn, one in the city of
Philadelphia, and one as far away as Buffalo,
I think this is a good time to put into the record the caveat that
in looking at electronic surveillances one must deal with them
professionally. You just have to understand that it is human beings
talking. Some human beings brag, some human beings will escalate
a story in the retelling. You will see that happening here in one
instance.
So I think there has to be a great deal of care, caution, and
responsibility exhibited in reviewing electronic surveillances of this
type. The first was from an electronic surveillance pursuant to a
court order which was executed by the members of the New York
City Police Department in May 1963. The occurrence had taken
place in the third week of April. This is within a matter of weeks.
The people involved, Peter Ferara, who was a Capo, and the Carlo
Gambino LCN family, and Michael Scandifia, who at that time is
an acting Capo.
Mike. He was told specifically * * *
Pete. To come and see me?
Mike. You're a captain. No, they don't want to come to you. They don't want to
come to you to embarrass you with your daughter.
Pete. Who did they tell that to?
Mike. They told that to Freddy.
Pete. Yeah.
Mike. They don't want to embarrass you. Three of them called. To him. They said,
“We don't want to go to Petey Pumps, we don't want to embarrass him with his
daughter."
Pete. They already did.
Mike. They already went to you * * ♦ er * * * this week * * * this is the
bullshit.
Pete. Yeah.
Mike. They don't want to give you no * ’ ’ in other words, they are telling you
they don’t want to embarrgiss you. In other words, they won't go to the convent.
Well, I would say, right now, they are giving you the zing. You want us to go to the
convent? You want us to embarrass you? Well, then, see that the right thing is
done.
Pete. Yeah.
Mike. Actually, what it boils down to, they’re looking to use a stick. “But now
we'll go on midnight raids. We'll do this, we’ll do that, we’ll do the other thing.
You’re a Captain. You belong to Carl's Family”.
Pete. Well, previous to that he hands me Carlo's picture. “You know him?” I said,
“Sure I know him”. “How long you know him?” “I know him twenty, thirty years”.
Mike. They didn’t expect you to say nothing.
424
Pete. “Can you tell us anything about him?" “The only thing I could tell you
about him is that he is a business man, been in business all his life. Brought up four
kids. They had a good education. They’re all in business. They all went to college
and married a profession. I said, what else could you ask for? He’s got a nice
family”.
See what they do * * ^ they want to get a message through. I mean get a message
through someplace. There’s no question about it.
Mike. They want to put the heat on you, me.
Pete. Yeah.
Mike. Because here’s the proof of it. They've gone to every Captain.
Pete. Yeah.
Mike. And they call them “Captains”. One guy said, “Foreman". And the other
guy said “Capo Regina”. I mean they’re going right to each head. To the head of
everybody they’re going to. But for them to say this, when he told me this, I said
“Jimmy, I think he already saw them".
Pete. Yeah.
Mike. “I think he already saw them”, I said. Now to put the heat on him to go to
his daughter, I said, this don’t make sense to me. I said, “Where the (obscene) does
this come into the picture?” Now they don’t want to embarrass you.
Pete. What are they going to embarrass me for? What can they do? Go up there?
Mike. Well, God forbid! They can’t * * * they can’t throw her out.
Pete. No.
Mike. They couldn’t throw Albert’s brother out. How are they going to throw her
out?
Pete. Nah. They can’t throw her out.
Mike. Embarrassment, that your daughter is a nun. I mean, Jesus Christ! it’s
supposed to be an honor.
Pete. They can’t do nothing. They won’t do nothing.
Mike. Dirty (obscene)! Now that they bring out everything Pete, the Cosa Nostra
is a wide open thing.
Pete. Yeah.
Mike. It’s an open book.
Pete. It’s an open book.
Mike. Pete, you know as well as I do, familiarity with anything whatsoever breeds
contempt. We’ve had nothing but familiarity with our Cosa Nostra * * * if it brings
up sides what the hell are we supposed to do? I only know one thing Pete. The Cosa
Nostra is the Cosa Nostra. You just do what the (obscene) bosses tell you!
May 20, 1963, and the target of the electronic surveillance by
FBI is Angelo Bruno in Philadelphia. He is attending a meeting
with Joseph Magliocco, who is at that time trying to take over a
family after the death of his brother-inJaw, as well as with Sal
Profaci, Peter Maggio, and Salvatore Maggio. The two Maggios are
related to Angelo Bruno.
Bruno describes FBI tactics used on Carlo Gambino, indicates
that they named all of his, Gambino’s, Capos for him. They named
Joe Biondo as the underboss, Joseph Riccobono as family counselor,
and they said:
These are your amici nostri, you are the Representante, you are the boss.
The F.B.I. asked, “Did you change the laws in your Family, that you could hit
F.B.I. men, punch and kick them? Well, this is the test, that if you change the laws,
and now you are going to hit F.B.I. men, every time we pick up one of your people
we are going to break their heads for them”.
And really they picked up one guy, they almost killed him, the F.B.I. They don’t
do that, you know. But they picked up one of his fellows and they crippled him.
They said, “This is an example. Now, the next time anybody lays a hand on an
F.B.I. man, that’s just a warning. There is nothing else we have got to tell you.
And they went away.
On June 3, 1963, in Buffalo, N.Y., Stefano Maggadino is speaking
on an FBI electronic surveillance. Present are Stefano Maggadino
and several top ranking members of his La Cosa Nostra family. Mr.
Maggadino is speaking:
425
They know everybody’s name. They know who’s Boss. They know who is on the
Commission. They know Amici Nostro [the Password, Our Friend].
The FBI said, “What was your caporegime doing here?” “What did he come to tell
you?”
11, 12, 13, were massaged [beaten up].
To Carlo Gambino they said “This is your underboss, this is your caporegime, this
is your consiglieri.
And one of the other persons present says: ‘They talk as if they
belonged/'
There is an escalation from one person — a Carlo Gambino adher-
ent beaten to 11, 12, and 13. I don't think that is explainable by the
passage of time. It was only one I have on somewhat reliable
authority.
We also have other types of conversations. Frank Nicholetti
speaking to Angelo Bruno, December 22, 1962: “It is a wonderful
thing, La Cosa Nostra."
To give you an inside view of organized crime and its totality and
its size. Meyer Lansky and his wife, on May 27, 1962, were watch-
ing a TV show in which one of the panelists referred to organized
crime as second only in size to the U.S. Government, and Meyer
Lansky turns to his wife and says, “It is bigger than United States
Steel."
I think the best evaluation of the FBI’s electronic surveillance
program is in a memorandum which was written by Mr. Courtney
Evans. At that time Mr. Courtney Evans was in charge of the
Special Investigation Division of the FBI which concerned itself
directly with organized crime, and Mr. Evans on August 21, 1964,
wrote a memorandum to A1 Belmont, who was the Associate Direc-
tor of the FBI, his superior in rank, and who covered in his author-
ity the entire General Investigative Division of the FBI. It reads
thus:
Milwaukee, Madison, Sprin^eld, Rockford, Kansas City, and St. Louis, are strict-
ly answerable to the leadership of the Chicago family in any major policy decisions
or significant problems. Frank Balistrieri of Milwaukee did a favor for Joe Bonnano
and this angered Sam Giancana when he learns of it because of the commission’s
disfavor with Bonnano.
We are probably in the unique position of better understanding Giancana’s reac-
tion than was Balistrieri.
That is actually a fact. Mr. Bonnano at this time was in some
difficulty with his peers on the commission. Mr. Balistrieri, though
a family leader in Milwaukee, was not aware of everything being
discussed and considered by the commission at that time, but the
FBI was. So they were actually in a position to literally be able to
say they knew more about what was happening within La Cosa
Nostra than a family leader in Milwaukee.
Mr. Evans goes on to say, “Our recent expansion in the develop-
ment of intelligence on the existence and activity of La Cosa
Nostra in Wisconsin tends to confirm that there is no adequate
substitute for," and then the description of an electronic surveil-
lance is deleted — “for the development of accurate information on
this underworld phenomenon."
We have further descriptions of how La Cosa Nostra works and
how the authority within a family discipline is demonstrated in
this conversation. Anthony Zerilli, a Capo in Detroit, is speaking to
Nick Ditta on December 4, 1963:
426
You are a friend of ours and you belong to my Regime. If I tell you to jump off a
20-story building, you jump off and you jump off any time I tell you to.
We have a conversation which describes the hierarchical struc-
ture. Again, Anthony Zerilli speaking in Detroit on December 4,
1963. He states that it is the obligation of a friend of ours to go to
the caporegime and tell him the reason for this is. The Capo
Regima is the confessor and he must be told whether he wants to
know or not, because he is the one who decided whether a person
should tell or should not tell.
According to Zerilli, one of the main requirements of a friend of
ours is that he cannot tell a lie to another friend of ours. The
informant stated Zerilli had indicated that one of the first things
you are taught is that you cannot lie to a friend of ours.
September 3, 1964, Stephano Maggadino, family leader in Buffa-
lo, states:
But these are secondary things. The commission has nothing to do with it. When
the commission takes up a matter the whole of America is involved because we
enjoy their full confidence, they have faith in us that we will do things honestly and
justly.
Mr. Cornwell. It appears quite evident from what you have just
recited that by 1963 the FBI knew, as you put it, perhaps more
about the scope and nature of organized crime in this country,
through their surveillance program, than many of its members did.
They knew the terminology, the positions, who held the positions.
When you were retained as a consultant for this committee you
were specifically asked to review various portions of that surveil-
lance, and I would like for you to describe how you went about that
task.
Mr. Salerno. When I began to work for the committee I sat
down with the chief counsel and we designed an approach to the
problem. We thought that the time period which should be of
concern to us should be from January 1, 1963, through the entire
year of 1963 and ending at June 30, 1964. That was an 18-month
period. It would be a period for approximately 11 months before
the death of the President and for some 8 months following his
death.
We did expand that briefly in looking at the La Cosa Nostra file
for a similar period surrounding the assassination of Dr. King just
to see if that was a matter of any interest, concern, or commentary
by anyone in organized crime.
From the examination of the La Cosa Nostra files and the study
of the organization as a whole there were natural leads that took
us to the next steps in progression.
We obtained for the committee and its staff individual files on
principals who came within the scope of the investigation. We
looked not only at individual files but for these people that were
important to us. We asked the FBI if they had electronic surveil-
lances and they made those available to us.
There came a time when in order to meet deadlines and com-
plete the assigned tasks, two persons, Miss Leslie Wizelman, and
Mr. Mark Flanagan, were brought into a conference with Professor
Blakey and I and we directed and instructed and trained them in
what our approach was, what we were looking for and how we
were looking for it, and they participated in this with me.
427
In all, we covered more than 300 volumes of electronic surveil-
lances that the FBI made available to us, more than 36 volumes of
La Cosa Nostra for the period 1962 to 1964, and another figure
which brought it beyond 50 for the period surrounding the death of
Dr. King.
Mr. Cornwell. I think it would be helpful, in order for the
committee again to get the greatest insight into the possibility of
whether men like Trafficante and Marcello would have had the
motive or means to assassinate the President, for you to tell us,
from the surveillance what the nature of the Cosa Nostra was
during the early 1960’s, what its objectives were and how it ran its
business affairs.
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I put together methodologies employed by
organized crime, goals, purposes, methods of achieving them, and
this is entirely based upon the material that we obtained from the
FBI in its intelligence program.
There is a national conspiratorial criminal organization within
the United States whose members refer to as La Cosa Nostra. The
organization is made up of groups known to the members as fami-
lies. The families are headed by a leader who is referred to as a
boss or the Italian word capo is used. The families have a second in
command, executive officer to the leader, who is referred to as the
underboss, and they use the Italian word sottocapo.
The families have a position known as counselor, or they use the
Italian word consigliere, who is considered to be an adviser and
who is available to all of the members of the family.
The family has within it subunits, known originally as Decina.
That was the name used when the numbers of the subunit was
limited to 10 in number. When that no longer became a fixed limit
the title was changed to regime.
The subunits are headed by a person with a title of caporegime,
or the head of the regime. This position is often referred to in the
anglicized word captain. The individual members of the family are
referred to as members, soldiers, or as a made man or as a button
man.
The families are governed in matters of import of policy and in
matters arising between families by the national commission whose
numbers can vary, which is made up of the leaders of the major
families. Those families whose leaders do not serve on the commis-
sion may have their interests represented by a commission
member.
Other terms for the organization or its individual families, often
used by outsiders, are the Mafia, the organization, the clique, the
boys, the office, the arm.
There are rules which are known to members, though not writ-
ten anywhere. They use relatives and friends as couriers. They use
relatives and friends as mail drops. They use friends and relatives
as message centers. They have elaborate systems of prearranged
times and telephone numbers in order to communicate with each
other and to thus avoid electronic surveillance.
They engage in political activity to an inordinate degree. They
make direct political contributions. They engage in fundraising in
obtaining contributions from others for political purposes.
428
They will support controlled or friendly candidates. They will
help control appointment of positions in government. They will
hold elective and appointive positions at all levels of government.
They will help relatives achieve elected and/or appointed positions
at all levels of government. They will try to influence the outcome
of government decisions. They will lobby in favor of legislation
they consider in their best interests. They will lobby against legis*
lation they consider not in their best interests.
They will engage in dispensing political patronage. They will
campaign against candidates considered to be inimical to their best
interests. They will assassinate other family leaders in order to
replace them. They will employ public relations efforts, such as
protesting Italian defamation, when the term Mafia or La Cosa
Nostra are ever used.
They will make illegal deals with high and lower level labor
leaders. They will get finders fees for arranging union loans. They
will get percentages for helping someone obtain Government loans.
They will operate an intelligence-gathering capability. They will
operate a counterintelligence capability. They will analyze the
extent of law enforcement knowledge concerning themselves and
their activities. They will intimidate or kill informants and wit-
nesses. They will fake illnesses, and once even a kidnapping, in
order to avoid legal process. They will utilize bribery as a tactic.
They will utilize other forms of corruption. They will engage in
blackmail. They will try to influence media stories.
They will avoid taking a position within the family if the de-
mands of such will compromise their usefulness to the family and
the organization in the underworld.
Two examples, John Montana gave up the family leadership in
Buffalo to Stephano Maggadino in order to run for political office
and he was in fact elected to the city council in that city.
Joe Caminici, the Milwaukee underboss, will not run the family
if leader Frank Balistrieri goes to jail, so as to not jeopardize his
position with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Mr. Cornwell. Part of the information that you have just de-
scribed as being derived from the surveillance indicates a hierar-
chical type of organization, discipline, rules, and regulations. The
committee has received evidence that Jack Ruby may have had
some contact with people who have been associated with organized
crime. Of course, the committee explored one such example in the
form of taking testimony from Lewis McWillie.
We also, as we noted earlier, heard Santos Trafflcante testify
that he did not know Jack Ruby or Lee Harvey Oswald. In order to
allow the committee to assess with greater precision the relevancy
or impact of that kind of evidence, I wonder if you could explain to
us in more detail, the nature of the hierarchical design of orga-
nized crime. I understand you do have a chart which you can use
for that purpose; is that correct?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I do, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. May we have JFK exhibit F-548 admitted into
evidence at this time, Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record at this point.
[JFK exhibit F-548 was admitted into evidence.]
429
An Organized Crime Family
BOSS
(Capo)
UNDERBOSS
LIEUTENANT
(Caporegime)
.COUNSELOR
(Consiglere)
LIEUTENANT
(Caporegime)
LIEUTENANT
(Caporegime)
1
SOLDIERS SOLDIERS
(Soldati) (Soldati)
SOLDIERS
(Soldati)
SOLDIERS
(Soldati)
SOLDIERS
(Soldati)
NON-MEMBER ASSOCIATES
AND FRONTS
VIOLENCE AND
THREATS
CORRUPTION: POLICE
and GOVERNMENT
OFFICIALS
ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES
(Gambling, Narcotics,
Loansharking)
(Real Estate, Restaurants)
JFK Exhibit F-548
Mr. Salerno. This is an example representative of an organized
crime family. The positions that I have named for you are shown.
The boss at the very top. The second in command is the underboss
or sottocappo. The counselor is not in the direct chain of command.
He is an adviser. He is usually an older member. To a large extent,
he is an historian. He will base his advice on things that happened
in the past, whether they worked out well or not. While he is
supposed to advise and be available to any member of the family,
the fact of the matter de facto comes out that he is usually a very
close friend of the boss and most of the advice he gives is to the
boss’s advantage rather than anyone else.
The next level of command are the lieutenants, captains, and the
anglicized word taken from caporegime. Then you have the individ-
ual units of soldiers who are governed by a capo. The interesting
thing here is that all of the soldiers are not of equal importance,
2H
430
all of the soldiers do not have the same kind of income. It is
entirely dependent upon their own abilities to create and to get
involved in illegal activity. One soldier may simply have as his
income a sinecure. He has a job with a construction company and
he couldn't find the offices of the construction company or any
building sites, but he gets a check which keeps him.
The next soldier in an alphabetical listing might very well be a
multimillionaire who would have 20, 40, or 50 people working for
him in different operations. So that beyond soldier, it goes out of
the family or parallel to the family and they can have associates
who are not necessarily of Italian origin. They can be of any race
or color or religious affiliation. They will participate in violence
and threats in many types of activities, in labor racketeering, to
intimidate legitimate industry, they may invest in legitimate indus-
try, they have illegal activities, gambling, narcotics, loan sharking,
are always on such a laundry list and there will also be a constant
methodology of attempting to corrupt police, prosecutors, any
person in government who might be harmful to them or helpful to
them if his efforts can be negated.
Mr. Cornwell. What, if any, is the purpose for the layering or
number of positions between the boss and the ultimate activities
that are affected by organized crime at the bottom of the chart?
Mr. Salerno. Well, this was stated in his testimony by Joseph
Valachi and is confirmed by everything that law enforcement
people have been able to find. The real main purpose for this
hierarchical structure is to protect the boss. All of the responsibili-
ty, all of the risk in the activities flows down from the boss and the
farther away he can get from the illegal activities that are commit-
ted down here, the less likely anyone is to get evidence which can
be used in a court of law and convict him of a violation of law. So
the responsibility and the risk is all down here at this end of the
chart and most of the money flows upward toward that end of the
chart. It is a form of protection, and insulation of the people on the
higher level.
Mr. Cornwell. With that being the case, what would you assess
as the significance of the testimony then from Santos Trafficante
that he did not know Jack Ruby if the committee wishes to explore
the issue of whether there could be any connection between Ruby's
activities and Trafficante?
Mr. Salerno. That could be a truthful statement without it
having any particular significance. It is quite possible for a leader
of a family, such as Mr. Trafficante is, to have people engaging way
down here in some illegal activity, the two never having met, the
two not even being aware of the other's existence or names.
Mr. Cornwell. Similarly, let me ask you what, if any, signifi-
cance might be derived from the evidence, if it is to be believed,
that the contact between a person such as Me Willie and Traffi-
cante was not close or intimate?
Mr. Salerno. I think I would give the same answer that it is not
necessary for someone up at this end of the chart to be personally
acquainted with a nonmember associate in order to have that
person discharging the wishes of the man at the top of the chart.
That can be handled through intermediaries.
431
Mr. Cornwell. What, if any, fact would you expect with respect
to the knowledge of a person, such as McWillie, or anyone else that
might be similarly situated, with respect to Trafficante? How much
knowledge would you expect that type of individual to have?
Mr. Salerno. I would say in view of the testimony that I have
heard, that Mr. McWillie was engaged in the casino gambling
industry in Havana as a manager and that Mr. Trafficante was an
entrepreneur in three or four such establishments, they are in the
same field, I am certain that they would know each other.
Mr. Cornwell. With La Cosa Nostra, would you expect that all
of the positions in that chart would be occupied by Italians?
Mr. Salerno. The positions within the family; yes. But in an
enterprise or in a venture, they would not be restricted to working
with other Italians who are members of that family. They might be
working with anyone from any kind of national background or
religious affiliation.
Mr. Cornwell. The bottom portion of the chart reflects that the
organization crime family you have been describing will use vio-
lence and threats. Will you tell us in more detail what in your
experience, the nature of such violence and threats consist of?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; there is such a thing as a typical or repre-
sentative gangland homicide. I would like to point out that killing
someone is an ultimate weapon that is used by organized crime. If
it is possible to achieve that which they seek to achieve with a
warning, with a threat, with a slap in the face, with some lesser
violence, they will utilize that. Violence is restricted. Peter Fer-
raro, that was mentioned earlier in my testimony, one time on
electronic surveillance, felt that America should take note of the
feet that if it wasn't for us, these are his words, 'Tf it weren't for
us, there could have been 20 Chicagos." He is talking about, appar-
ently, the St, Valentine's Day homicide — seven people killed all at
one time. The fact of the matter is, and I put this in my paper for
the President's Commission on Violence, that as crime got better
organized, gang wars certainly diminished. I would think that
homicides in toto probably were less following the prohibition era
than they were during the prohibition era.
However, the definition of the President's Commission on Vio-
lence also included fear, and I think that the fear of organized
crime has been on a constant increase in the United States for the
last 50 years, and you can see that fear, as against the actual
violence of homicide, working against each other. If the fear is
sufficient to achieve their goals, you don't find that many homi-
cides. It is when the fear will not work that the homicide will be
engaged in.
Now, with regard to organized crime murders, I am sure, one
logical question is, how do you know so much about organized
crime murders? How does the FBI know so much about organized
crime murders?
Well, we know a great deal about them in many, many ways. For
example, one way in which we have learned about organized crime
killings are from the killers themselves, people who have confessed
their participation and are even going beyond that and willing to
testify against others who were involved. Abe Relis, in ''Murder,
Inc.," described a number of murders committed in and around the
432
city of New York and at least one in the city of Los Angeles.
Joseph Valachi, in his long recitation before a congressional com-
mittee, included the details of a number of murders. Joseph Lufer-
elli in New York City confessed the details of his own participation
in the murder of Joey Gallo. We have the court testimony of
Joseph Barboza regarding homicides that he committed and the
evidence was given against Raymond Patriarca and others in New
England. The FBI affidavit that I mentioned in a Cleveland case
was substantiated in great part by the confession of one Raymond
Ferito of Erie, Pa., who was brought into Cleveland to participate
in a bombing, and he implicated others, including James Fratiano
who himself is now in the care, custody, and control of the Federal
Government while he is divulging a great deal of his knowledge
about organized crime, including a number of homicides.
We had a man named Harold Koenigsberg who told the FBI
about a great number of murders that he had been involved in and
even drove with them to a chicken farm in New Jersey where he
buried the bodies. And several bodies were disinterred and identi-
fied. We have a case in Kansas City where four young men were
hired to do a contract hit and they confessed their guilt and impli-
cated the others who were involved. So we have a great deal of
knowledge about killings and right from the lips of the killer.
We also, through electronic surveillance, have been able to hear
the confessions, if you will.
It seems that people who might be planning at this moment to do
a homicide, while they are waiting for their opportunity, will
enga.ge in reminiscences of the past in which they discuss other
homicides. The FBI got one exactly like that in the city of Miami
from an electronic surveillance put in on Jackie Cerone, David
Yaris, and other Chicago hit men who were planning a murder
down there but began to discuss a homicide that they had commit-
ted back in the city of Chicago. Exactly the same type of thing has
happened on an electronic surveillance in New Jersey on Angelo
“Gyp'' DeCarlo which was put into a court record and is now in the
public domain. Peter Ferraro, once again, was planning one homi-
cide and while discussing that went into a recital of past jobs they
had done. There are many examples of that.
Mr. Cornwell. From such sources of information, would you
simply tell us the basic characteristics of organized crime's use of
violence and very briefly illustrate that with a few examples.
Mr. Salerno. Well, an organized crime hit is used for a number
of reasons. It may be used to maintain internal discipline and
loyalty to the leadership within the group. It may be use to limit
evidence gathering possibilities through the intimidation of inform-
ers, witnesses, and victims of their crimes. It may be used to
influence the outcome of a criminal justice matter, if they can
induce fear in a witness, in the jurors, in court officers, in the
police, or prosecutors. Homicides will be used in guaranteeing the
success of some illegal operations.
Gambling; gambling is an illegal business engaged in by orga-
nized crime where a great deal of credit is extended. That business
could not exist unless debtors knew that they were expected to pay.
Loan sharking is based entirely upon “your body is the collateral,"
433
as one loan shark put it. Extortion, labor racketeering are also
conditioned upon fear.
These are the characteristics that will be found in a representa-
tive gangland homicide. No. 1, it must have approval and authori-
zation of people of some rank. Now, such a person is faced with
something of a dilemma. I think he enjoys the power that is thus
vested in him, the power of life and death, if you will, but he does
appreciate that in legal terms he will be just as guilty as the actual
killers, and thus, when he approves of the issuance of what is
known as a contract to kill, he will very probably be seeking to
limit the vulnerability that he might feel and, therefore, he will
most likely limit his role to giving that authorization to one close
trusted person. We have come to call that person the expediter. He
is responsible for seeing to it that the murder is accomplished, and
he is given the widest latitudes in how this is done. No. 1, he could
do it himself if he elected to. He could recruit others and he could
join with the others in accomplishing the desired act. Although the
expediter has the option of doing it himself, and that would limit
the conspiracy to just two persons, the authorizer and the expedit-
er, this is the least likely possibility that he would follow. He is not
entirely impervious to the fact that layers of insulation can be used
as a valid form of protection against direct evidence.
The most likely thing is that he will pass the contract on to
others. He cannot divest himself of the responsibility for the ulti-
mate success or failure. He may subcontract the matter out to a
subexpediter to carry it still further or he may directly recruit the
'‘hit'' team himself.
Now, you have the hit men, these are the actual killers. They
will be recruited, if possible, from felons who have demonstrated
some successful ability in the past. Within the archives of orga-
nized crime, doing a successful hit was always considered to be a
way of “earning your bones." And that's an expression that means
you will be welcomed into membership in the criminal organization
or, if you are already involved, you earn a position of trust from a
grateful leadership.
Persons who will be doing their first hit will more than likely be
part of the team where there are some more experienced members.
The method that is employed may vary although the most popular
is murder by gunshot fire from handguns. In recent years, it has
been noted by people who professionally deal with organized crime,
that a new type of handgun seems to have come into popular and
frequent use and that is a .22-caliber pistol with a silencer. There
has been some speculation that maybe a single hit team that likes
.22-caliber pistols was being widely employed throughout the coun-
try. My own opinion is that gangland killers have simply learned
what other assassins have known for a long time. And that is, that
if you get close enough, a .22-caliber pistol will kill just as effective-
ly as a shotgun and a magnum and it is much quieter about doing
it.
In addition to handguns, there are sometimes variances you will
find dependent upon individual tastes, local customs are perhaps
dictated by special circumstances. Killers in Chicago have tradi-
tionally favored the use of a shotgun. Youngstown, Ohio, in the
past, and Cleveland in the mid-1970's, utilized dynamite and other
434
explosives. Rifles have been employed when conditions made it
difficult to get close to the victim. This is often the case during a
gang war. Knives, ice picks, strangulation by garroting have also
been employed.
Then in addition to the weaponry that is used, you will find that
there is usually more that one executioner; most likely two. If they
are using handguns, they will decide whether they are going to act
simultaneously in their gunshot fire or one may be the covering
backup man for the other, and after reviewing hundreds of these
cases, the record shows very clearly that the imported, out-ofitown
killers is overwhelmingly the exception rather than the rule.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Chairman, at this point, I think that we
might want to break for lunch and come back and continue at a
later point.
Chairman Stokes. The committee at this time will stand in
recess until 1:30 this afternoon.
[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m. the committee recessed, to reconvene
at 1:30 p.m.]
Afternoon Session
Chairman Stokes. The committee will come to order.
Counsel, Mr. Cornwell, may proceed.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Salerno, prior to the lunch break you had described for us
what the FBI had learned through their program of physical and
electronic surveillance in the early sixties, and the broad outlines
of La Cosa Nostra in this country as it existed during that period of
time, together with a description of the way it operated, its disci-
pline, its hierarchical structure, and its use of violence, and the
means that it used to carry out such violence.
Let me direct your attention at this time to the question of
motive. If the organization was such that it could have carried out
an assassination, did it, nevertheless, have the motive to do so in
1963?
Mr. Salerno. Yes sir. We have obtained some data in which we
can actually quantify that and I can show it to you with the help of
an exhibit I made.
Mr. Cornwell. At this time, Mr. Chairman, may we have ad-
mitted into the record two exhibits which have been marked for
identification as JFK F-551 and F-552.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, they may be entered into
the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibits F-551 and F-552 follow:]
435
Organized Crime Indictments and Convictions
JFK Exhibit F-551
Organized Crime Program
attorneys days in court
SOURCE, U S Department of Justice
JFK Exhibit F-552
Mr. Salerno. In addition, sir, what is shown on these charts, the
intelligence gathering confirms their reactions to what is demon-
strated here.
You see the chart is just about self-explanatory. The first one
indicates organized crime indictments and convictions, and with
the advent of the Kennedy administration, there is an almost
constant rise up through 1963.
436
The charts here are the Organized Crime Section of the Depart-
ment of Justice. This relates to the number of attorneys in the
Organized Crime Section of the Department of Justice, the number
of days they spent in field work, the number of days before grand
juries in the presentation of evidence, and the number of days in
court and legal litigation.
Mr. Cornwell. You have told us that the electronic surveillance
confirms this. Very briefly, would you summarize for us, if you can,
what was learned from that surveillance about just how bad the
Kennedy administration’s organized crime program was hurting La
Cosa Nostra during these years?
Mr. Salerno. It manifests itself in the strongest language
against President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. I would describe
it as being antagonistic and very unhappy with the President of
the United States. With regard to the Attorney General, it is bare
hatred.
Mr. Cornwell. The prosecution, the pressure, was disrupting
their operations, was it?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, to a considerable degree. I will give you just a
few examples. Electronic surveillance in casinos in Nevada. Four
casinos had been skimming. One casino $700,000 per year. The
others were averaging well beyond $1 million per year skimmed
out, not declared for tax purposes, either to the Federal govern-
ment or to the State of Nevada. That was realized to be in jeopardy
when they discovered some electronic surveillance in the account-
ing offices of those casinos.
To give it very briefly, Mr. Cornwell, the end of an era had come
and they recognized it. If you were an organized crime leader of an
organization that many people did not believe existed, very few
priorities were being directed toward you, if your activities crimi-
nally stayed close to what people call victimless crimes, you had
almost the perfect crime accomplished. You are the leader of a
group that no one believes exists and you are making millions of
dollars from operations that not too many people complain about.
That was coming to an end.
So a tremendous financial empire was being very seriously
threatened.
Mr. Cornwell. You mentioned that you had a number of specific
instances where this phenomenon was discussed over the electronic
surveillances.
Mr. Chairman, we have marked those, or some of those examples
for JFK exhibits F-604 to F-618, F-620 to F-622, and F-625 to
F-643. May we have those admitted into the record?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, they may be entered into
the record at this point.
[The above referred to JFK exhibits F-604 to F-618, F-620 to
F-622, and F-625 to F-643 follow:]
437
JFK Exhibit F-604
F.B.T. electronic surveillance of Sam Giancana, in
discussion with Gus Alex and Edward D. Vogel, two
associates. January 31, 1962-
Conversation indicates that the Chicago syndicate ,
insofar as its gambling activities are concerned,
for all practical purposes has come to an end,
primarily from the intense pressure placed upon
the organization by the "G", meaning the Federal
government .
This fact , coupled with the fact that the state
and local police have been forced to move against
the syndicate, has brought Giancana etal. to the
realization that for the time being "everyone is
on his own", meaning that they will no longer
receive support from the organization nor can anyone
expect influence to be brought to bear on their
behalf .
JFK Exhibit F-605
La Cosa Nostra File January, 1962
Sam Giancana and John D'Arco, (Sam’s political
henchman), discuss the fact that Mayor Daley wants
to put a former F.B.I. man named Spencer in as a
candidate for Sheriff of Cook County on the Democratic
ticket against Ogilvie, the Republican candidate.
Giancana: (of Spencer) He’s like Kennedy, he’ll get
what he wants out of you, but you won't get
anything out of him.
Tells D’Arco that it may have been a tactical error for
him to have let his antipathy toward spencer made known.
D’Arco: I had to Moe, I was desperate. You told me
to get the guy out. You gave me a (obscene)
order.
Giancana: Well, the Mayor
D'Arco: Well, this guy (Daley) is the Almighty. As
powerful as you are with us, he’s as
powerful with them. You say, 'Do this’ I
What the (obscene), we don't even ask ’Why?’
we just do it, right? It's the same thing
with him (Daley). V^en you gave me that order
to get him off, I got desperate.
Giancana: Well, it^s happened, so there’s nothing you
can do about it. Well, as far as the city is
concerned we're out, and as far as the county
is concerned, we’re out, so it looks like we’ll
just have to go into Indiana and run this thing
from Hammond. We'll put up whorehouses and
everything else.
438
JFK Exhibit F-606
Feb. 27, 1962 Frank Ferraro and Hy Godfrey, two
members of the Chicago criminal
organization, discuss Special Agent August Kempff
and another F.B.I. man who are giving them a hard
time in the Top Hood Program and the Criminal
Intelligence Program.
Ralph Pierce (a high-ranking member of the Chicago
criminal organization) "is closed down and he is
going to be closed down from now on".
JFK Exhibit F-607
Jan. 15, 1963. Airtel from SAC Chicago to The Director.
Chuck English bemoans the fact that the Federal
government is closing in on the organization
and apparently nothing can be done about it. Makes
various and sundry inflammatory remarks about the
Kennedy administration.
JFK Exhibit F-608
F.B.I. La Cosa Nostra Summary, January 31, 1963.
Permission is being sought for retaliation against Federal
investigators, newspersons and politicians who expose
La Cosa Nostra.
439
JFK Exhibit F-609
N.Y.C. Police Department Intelligence Bulletin -'^10
June 7, 1963
An analysis of police intelligence work. A conversation
between 2 Brooklyn hoodlums. They curse the police.
"They know a lot... they know everything. They put
everything together, lots of things. Where we take
it for granted it don’t mean nothing.
"These people (the police) have been gathering and
gathering. They go herel They go therel See,
before it was a different story. If you had the
locals, they knew the information, but they kept it
for themselves. Today, they are all working together.
We got a big problem.
"These people are united. Everything they collect,
they concentrate. And now everything goes into
one office. Before, every squad kept the information
for themselves. You take this cop on the corner,
you’ve been paying him for 20 vears , maybe. They get
the information. Someone comes in from New York and
asks if he knows so and so. * Oh, he’s a bookmaker’.
And you’ve been paying him for 20 yearslll That’s
the condition you got today".
JFK Exhibit F-610
Buffalo Div. Elsur on Stefano Magaddino June 11, 1963.
He is talking to an underling from Syracuse, Anthony deStefano.
"You see, the Cosa Nostra, The other day they made
me become frightened. They know our business
better than us. They know the heads of the families,
the Capodecina, the F.B.I. does.
"Therefore , that ' s why, the other day, I say,
'Be careful before you open your mouth' .
"Because sometime somebody could be a spy (law
officer) and you might think he is an amico
nostro (a friend of ours and a member),"
440
JFK Exhibit F-611
Airtel August 7, 1963
Gus Alex, a Giancana henchman in Chicago, states
that the F.B.I. has been following Giancana ever\Tn;here
he went, even on a golf course. Alex stated that no one
can contact Giancana because of the F.B.I. surveillance.
JFK Exhibit F-612
La Cosa Nostra File August 8, 1963
Joe *’Beck” DiPalermo asked Vito Genovese for
permission to retaliate against Federal narcotic
agents that he claimed were framing members.
Vito said something would be done about it.
JFK Exhibit F-613
La Cosa Nostra File October 15, 1963
Buddy Jacobson and Pat Marcy, political front men for
Sam Giancana.
Jacobson stated that he had never seen conditions so bad
as they are in Chicago at this time. Jacobson states
that Paul Ricca (former leader of the Chicago criminal
organization) advised him that the organization must be
patient and wait for the pressure to lift. Jacobson
tells Marcy he has never seen a time when they had so
little going for them.
441
JFK Exhibit F-614
F.B.I. electronic surveillance in the residence of
Charles Costello in Florida. Costello is a relative
and associate of Angelo Bruno, L.C.N. leader in
Philadelphia, Penna. Bruno is a frequent winter
visitor to this residence.
Oct. 24, 1963 Madeline (Mrs. Charles) Costello in
conversation with Unidentified Male.
Madeline: "I won't talk in this house, that's the
way things are, alright? I want to talk.
I'll take a walk outside. You know there's
got to be something in this house".
Continues, saying the house is vacant so much there is
ample time and opportunity for installation of a "mike".
She has expressed similar thoughts in the past.
Madeline: "I'll tell you the things they are doing
to that man (Angelo Bruno) are awful,
just terrible. ..."
U.M.
"They are crucifying him.
JFK Exhibit F-615
1963 Elsur on Santo Trafficante in a Miami
restaurant .
Trafficante: "Let me tell you this. This is
what happens to me. Now, I don't
give a (obscene) about the S. & G. I know when I'm
beat, you understand?
"I got a numbers office in Orlando. They grab everybody,
forty or fifty people. Forty or fifty thousand in bond.
They have no evidence, but when they get through it costs
thousands .
"I got another office in St. Cloud, Florida. You can't
even find St. Cloud on the (obscene) map, but the
(obscene) 'G' found it.
"Kennedy's right-hand man, he goes through the (obscene)
nigger town. Must have been 2,000 niggers, and makes
a (obscene) big raid over there.
"Just a start, any (obscene) place that they found a
phone connection in there from Tampa "
442
JFK Exhibit F-616
Miami, Fla. 1963
F.B.I. electronic surveillance on Johnny "Dee^*
Palmisano in Florida. He is in conversation with
an associate, Ralph Petillo, discussing the F.B.I.
and Attorney General’s fight against organized
crime.
Johnny Dee says that Hoover is not heard of
anymore because of the Kennedys.
JFK Exhibit F--617
F.B.I. La Cosa Nostra File 1963.
Angelo Bruno expected an I.R.S. indictment and was
prepared to leave the country to live in Italy. He
also recommended to Gerry Catena (of New Jersey) that
he prepare to depart. Gerry said it would be very
difficult for him to do so because of his family.
443
JFK Exhibit F-618
2. On February 8, 1962, Angelo Bruno and Willie Weisburg
discussed the Kennedys. Angelo Bruno at that time was the leader
of organized crime in the city of Philadelphia. Bruno was also
a member of the Commission. Weisburg is a business associate of
Bruno's. Weisburg is complaining about the FBI and the Kennedys.
Weisburg: See what Kennedy done. With Kennedy, a
guy should take a knife, like one of them
other guys, and stab and kill the (obscenity),
where he is now. Somebody should kill Che
(obscenity). I mean it. This is true.
Honest to God. It's about time to go. But
I Cell you something. I hope I get a week's
notice. I'll kill. Right in Che (obscenity)
in Che White House, Somebody's got to get
rid of this (obscenity) .
Bruno responds to Weisburg' s statements with Che
following story:
"Look, Willie, do you see there was a King, do you
understand. And he found out that everybody was saying
Chat he was a bad king. This is an old Italian story.
So, there was an old wise woman about 140 years old.
So, he figured. Let me go Calk to the old wise woman.
She knows everything. So he went to Che old wise woman.
So he says Co her. I came here because I want your
opinion. He says, do you Chink I'm a bad king. She
says, no, I Chink you are a good king. He says, well
how come everybody says I'm a bad king? She says be-
cause they are stupid. They don't know. He says,
well how come, why do you say I'm a good king. Well,
she said, I knew your great grandfather. He was a
bad king. I knew your grandfather. He was worse. I
knew your father. He was worse Chan them. You, you
are worse chan all of them, but your son, if you die,
your son is going to be worse Chan you. So it's better
to be with you, (All laugh) So Brownell (former
Attorney General) was bad. He was no (obscenity) good.
He was this and that.
Weisurg: Do you know what this man is going to do? He ain't
going to leave nobody alone,
Bruno: I know he ain't. But you see, everybody in there was
bad. The other guy was good because Che other guy was
worse. Do you understand? Brownell came. He was no
good. He was worse Chan Che guy before,
Weisburg: Not like this one.
— continued —
444
Bruno :
Weisburg :
Bruno :
Weisburg :
Bruno :
Weisburg:
Page 2
Not like this one. This one is worse. Right? If something
happens to this guy. (Laughs)
Let me tell you something. The FBI always hated the IR.
Always. The IR never checked with the Treasury men. They
went separate ways. They wouldn’t give each other
information. They wanted the credit themselves. He
made it with local authorities. He made it ring-around-
the rosy, pal.
Oh, yeah. This guy is an accountant, see. So, now, he
had to do something worse. So what? He started to think,
what can I do more than the other guy. The other guy made
the anti-racketeering law, gambling laws, he did this and
he did that. V.Tiat can I do. He says, I know what I can
do. Anybody that has a record that is police property,
when he gets pinched, no bail, (Bruno then compares the
Italian process of not allowing bail and incarcerating
individuals until proven innocent.)
It’s still America, though.
So, it’s still America. They are trying to pass a Federal
law that you can’t take the Fifth (amendment). When they
grant you immunity you can’t take the Fifth.
They are not going to pass that law.
Bruno :
But they might.
445
JFK Exhibit F-620
4. On February 17, 1962, the following conversation was held
between Angelo Bruno, previously identified as a Commission member and
leader of the Philadelphia family, and Mario Maggio, and Peter Maggio.
The latter two individuals are in-laws and associates of Bruno’s.
Maggio: ...Kennedy is going to leave, they are going to make him
a special assistant (to the President) out of him. They
want him out of the way, he is too much, he is starting to
hurt too many people, like unions. He is not only
hurting the racket guys, but others , anti- trust ... I
think that he is going to leave. But the only reason he
won’t leave, which I heard before, you see he wants
Edgar Hoover out of that.
Bruno : Edgar Hoover.
Maggio: He wants Edgar Hoover out of the FBI because he is a fairy,
you know he is a fairy, I heard this before...
Bruno: Who?
Maggio: Edgar Hoover is a fairy...
Bruno: Who would ever listen to that bullshit. , .
Maggio: Listen to this. Edgar Hoover is not married and neither
is his assistant, read back in his history...
Bruno: His assistant?
Maggio: I heard a story about Kennedy being a fairy...
Maggio then relates a story about a Boston newspaper talking
about Kennedy going to a party dressed as a girl and concludes, "I
can't see Kennedy getting out of this job, I told Paul. They are
going to make this a family affair and he wants to be President."
JFK Exhibit F-621
5. On April 22, 1962 a memorandum from the Director of the
FBI to the Attorney General states that Mr. Celano and Ralph
Pierce referred to Robert Kennedy as "vicious" for ordering the
Illinois Bell Telephone Company to cut off telephone service to
Illinois Sport News. Both of these individuals are top echelon
associates of Sam Giancana.
35-379 0 - 79 - 29
446
JFK Exhibit F-622
6. On May 2, 1962 two New York LCN members, Sal Profaci and
Mlchelino Clements, and a third unidentified individual named Bob,
had the following conversation:
Clemente: "Bob Kennedy won't stop today until he puts us all in
jail all over the country. Until the Commission meets
and puts its foot down, things will be at a standstill.
When we meet, we all got to shake hands, and sit down and
talk, and, if there is any trouble with a particular
regime, it's got to be kept secret, and only the heads
are to know about it, otherwise some broad finds out,
and finally the newspapers."
Later in the conversation, Clemente states that things
are not like they were years ago, when the Commission would meet
once a month, and there were no cops around to spy on them.
Clemente stated that today, in order to have a meeting,
you have to tell each one individually about the meeting, without
letting them know who else will be present, or what the meeting
is going to be about, so that there will be no chance of any
information leaking out.
October 23, 1962
JFK Exhibit F-625 —
Pat Marcy, John D'Arco and Congressman Roland Libonati
Libonati gave them a Cuba-China-India war briefing. Indicates
he doesn't even know who is running against him because any opposition
is laughable.
"Last time, you guys built me up to 98,000 votes and the
other guy got 23,000. I'/ho ran against me last time?" His
Republican opponent in the current election will be Joseph D. Day.
Libonati on Robert F. Kennedy:
"I killed six of his bills. That wiretapping bill, the
intimidating informers bill...."
Libonati thinks that John Kennedy is a sweetheart, but
Robert F. Kennedy is cruel.
Libonati describes how he opposed a Robert Kennedy bill and
then got a call from Mayor Daley. Libonati told John F. Kennedy to
stop Robert Kennedy from calling Daley on such matters. Bobby said
on TV that his brother wants him to stay out of politics because he
is the Attorney General. Libonati takes credit for this, saying,
"That was me."
447
JFK Exhibit F-626
13. On January 17, 1963, Raymond Patriarca, Gennaro Angiulo
and Peter Limone had a conversation regarding Robert Kennedy,
Patriarca is the Boston LCN leader and a Commission member. The
following is a summary of his statement.
Raymond states that things are not too good as long
as Attorney General Kennedy is in Washington, D. C. Relates an
argument he had with Robert Kertnedy when called before a Con-
gressional committee three or four years ago .
JFK Exhibit F-627
14. On February 28, 1963 Sam Giancana stated, referring to
the outcome of a recent local election:
"That will teach that little (obscenity) Kennedy, who
runs Chiacgo."
Chicago Div. FBI Elsur
JFK Exhibit F-628
October 14 , 1963
Sam Giancana, Charles "Chuck" English, Tony Accardo
and Butch Blasi are present.
They discuss Robert Kennedy not being available for
a Columbus Day Parade, but coming to Chicago on October 13th for
a B’nai B’rith affair. The Jews downtown were beaming.
Discuss the Bobby Baker scandal. He just resigned his
job; they didn't do anything to him. Fe must have come out with
a ton of money.
Discuss Police Superintendent 0. W. Wilson's chart
(presented before the McClellan Committee at the Valachi Hearings).
"On top he had an Italian organization."
Joe Glimco (an associate) appeared on CITY DESK a
Sunday media talk show and said that if they checked out Police
Superintendent 0. W. Wilson as thoroughly as they have checked
Glimco, Wilson would be in jail, and Bobby Kennedy too!!
Chuck English speaks of the possibility of the Teamsters
Union going back into the AFL. It would hurt Kennedy if they
were to take Hoffa back.
They discuss golf. Someone asks if Bobby Kennedy plays
golf, they know that John Kennedy does. Suggest putting a bomb
in his golf bag. ( hey all laugh.)
448
JFK Exhibit F-629
F.B.I. electronic surveillance of Stefano Magaddino
May 23, 1963.
Magaddino: "We are in a bad situation in Cosa Nostra.
When Frofaci died, the Borgata broke up"
"They know everything under the sun. They know who's
back of it, they know Anici, they know Capodecina,
they know there is a Commission. We got to watch
right now, this thing, where it goes and stay as
quiet as possible".
Magaddino expresses a bitter hate for Attorney
General Robert Kennedy.
JFK Exhibit F-630
F.B.I. Buffalo Division Elsur on Stefano Magaddino.
October 31, 1963. Peter A. Magaddino during a discussion
of President Kennedy states,
"He should drop dead."
Stefano Maggadino adds, "They should kill the whole
family, the mother and father too"I! "When he talks
he talks like a mad dog, he says, *My brother the
Attorney General’. IThy he never won a case. He
never tried a case".
This comment is followed by many obscenities by
Stefano Magaddino.
JFK Exhibit F-631
May 22, 1963 F.B.I. interoffice memo from Courtney
Evans to A1 Belmont discussing the
Saturday Evening Post article on
Joseph Valachi that is being written by Peter Maas,
"The foregoing clearly indicates that Che
Department is motivated strictly by political
considerations. While they have apparently
yielded Co our view that Valachi should not
be interviewed by the magazine writer, they
are, nevertheless, exploiting this whole
situation for their own benefit.
"Under the circumstances, we should not get
involved, but you will be advised of any
further information we can develop as to
Departmental action."
Handwritten: "I concur. I never saw so much skulduggery,
the sanctity of Department files, including
Bureau reports is a thing of the past."
"H" (for Hoover)
449
JFK Exhibit F-632
F.B.I. Elsur on James Lanza, leader of the L.C.N. Family
in San Francisco. August 12, 1963. Lanza is in
discussion with an associate Vito Bruno.
V.B.:- Talks about reading of Cosa Nostra in the paper.
Lanza: Yeah, this guy Joe Valachi is the guy who is
telling about it .
V.B.: Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra.
Lanza: This guy is in jail. Vito Genovese is in jail too.
This guy gave information to the federals. He
attacked a man with a rock and killed him, and the
prison officials didn't know why he killed him.
Anyway, this guy thought the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra
had sent the guy in to kill him.
This thing has come out now in the papers but he
has been telling about it for the past year.
V.B. They know everything.
Lanza : Yeah.
JFK Exhibit F-633
Buffalo Div. Elsur on Stefano Magaddino Sept. 17, 1963
After a lengthy discussion about Joseph Valachi, Magaddino
states, "we passed laws that this guy has got to die".
JFK Exhibit F-634
F.B.I. Elsur in the Pittsburg area.
Sept. 27, 1963 Advised that John Sebastian LaRocca's
remaining in the Pittsburg area during the months of October
and November, 1963 will be contingent on the testimony of
Joseph Valachi. If his testimony should "hit closer to home".
La Rocca would take a short vacation at his Bel Aire, Florida
residence. La Rocca is extremely annoyed about Valachi' s
testimony and will not allow it to be discussed in his
presence. He claims, "Valachi hasn't done a decent thing
since he was born, and never did a good thing in his life."
La Rocca departs for Florida on Oct. 10, 1963.
450
JFK Exhibit F-635
N.Y.C. Police Dept. Elsur on John Masiello
(Masiello has since been convicted of defrauding
the U.S. government when he was a contractor to
deliver the U.S. mail. He later testified against
Congressman Frank, Brasco when that worthy was
convicted of accepting bribes from Masiello).
Sept. 27, 1963. John Masiello and his close associate
Anthony "Hickey" DiLorenzo are talking
about Joseph Valachi's testimony.
Masiello is upset because Valachi mentioned the secret code.
DiLorenzo believes Valachi is going to scramble up a lot
of people because he is speaking so freely. Says that
Steve Buffalo, one of the names mentioned, is a friend
of theirs.
Masiello: He is going to make it hot for everybody.
DiLorenzo: They (Law enforcement) are going to harass
people and are definitely going to try to
pass that wire tapping law. If they ever
get that law passed, forget about it. They
probably have miles of tape that they put together.
They’ll say well, this is what we got, then they’ll
start indicting guys.
Masiello: It isn’t a free country anymore.
Oct. 4, 1963 A1 Chieco asks John Masiello if he
is going to be sucked into this Valachi
testimony, and if he knew Valachi.
Masiello states he knew Valachi but will not be sucked
into anything. Chieco suggests Valachi should have been
killed years ago, for having an affair with his sister-in-law
Masiello says it is bad enough he mentions all those names
but he should not have mentioned how a guy is made, how a
guy is proposed, because those are things you die with.
They both hope that Valachi cracks up because then everything
can be charged off to his insanity.
451
JFK Exhibit F-636
Buffalo Elsur on Stefano Maggadino
Sept. 28, 1963 Stefano Magaddino, Peter A. Magaddlno
and Sam Rangatore.
They are discussing newpaper coverage of Joseph Valachi's
testimony. Magaddino is concerned over the fact that
some time in the past he had told Valachi about a murder
that he , Magaddino, had committed .
The participants in the conversation characterize
Valachi's testimony as "fairy tales".
Magaddino says that Vito Genovese should have killed Valachi.
JFK Exhibit F-637
Oct. 1, 1963. Listening to Joseph Valachi's testimony on T.V.
F.B.I. Florida Elsur in restaurant operated by
Vincent James Palmisano, alias Jimmy Dee.
Palmisano states facetiously that they should go to the
Army-Navy store and buy up all the Italian and American
flags they can find and put them around the restaurant
to counteract slurs on Italians.
Discuss the present admininstratior^ saying it is
setting up a Nazi type government, seizing control of
television and radio stations. Discuss Sam Giancana's
association with Frank Sinatra.
Palmisano: "Robert F. Kennedy will never get ALL the
bookmakers. Valachi is living like a king, he has his
own army. They are probably furnishing him his own woman".
Oct. 7, 1963 Jimmy Dee aays, "There's going to be a lot
of killings as a result of this hearing".
452
JFK Exhibit F-638
F.B.I. La Cosa Nostra File.
October 9, 1963 Sam Giancana (LCN leader in Chicago)
is extremely apprehensive of being
subpoenaed before the McClellan
Committee hearings on organized crime.
October 16, 1963 Sam Giancana has issued instructions
to all political associates to
discontinue their practice of attending weddings and
funerals of hoodlum families.
JFK Exhibit F-639
Teletype from Chcago Div. F.B.I. to The Director Oct. 10, 1963.
Giancana and Charles ’’Chuck.” English discuss Joseph Valachi's
testimony. They agree that he is unable to hurt the Chicago
organization, but feel that he is doing a great deal of harm
to New York mobsters. English’s biggest fear is that the
government will be able to capitalize on this type of situation
in the future by obtaining other informants, by showing that
they went along with Valachi and did not hold him accountable
for his own crimes.
JFK Exhibit F-640
La Cosa Nostra File, F.B.I.
October 25, 1963. Joseph Zerilli has ordered all
Detroit Italian Syndicate numbers operations closed
and as of December 13, they are still closed. This
order came as a result of the Valachi Hearings
testimony and an I.R.S. raid in Toledo, Ohio.
453
JFK Exhibit F-641
Autumn, 1963. S.F. T-1 (who is a "live" informant of
the San Francisco Division of the F.B.I.
indicates :
There will be a change in the initiation
ceremony of La Cosa Nostra as a reult of
Valachi's testimony and the publicity
concerning it.
JFK Exhibit F-642
March 2, 1964 Director John Edgar Hoover speaks on
the telephone to Senator John McClellan.
Tells him that the Valachl Hearings, "shook them all up".
Senator McCellan suggests that Mr. Hoover write him a letter
to that effect.
March 6, 1964, Lettter from Director Hoover to Senator
McClellan states in part:-
"In pursuing this purpose your committee has placed
on the record information concerning conditions
most citizens did not realize existed. There is
no doubt that attention across the Nation was
focused on Joseph Valachi*s testimony regarding
La Cosa Nostra as well as on the testimony of
other witnesses who appeared at these hearings.
Public opinion was moved against the forces of evil."
JFK Exhibit F-643
F.B.I. Intelligence Bulletin, March 11, 1964
Charles Locicero (Counseler of a Brooklyn L.C.N. family)
tells an F.B.I. informant that money was being gathered
to fight Valachi's testimony and the Senate hearings.
They are getting in touch with people in the news media
and political figures to hold up any legislation which
may result.
454
Mr. Cornwell. Apart from, I take it, the fear that the organized
crime element in this country had that the Kennedy administra-
tion was destroying them, as demonstrated by this surveillance,
was there any realistic expectation if they had done something so
drastic as to kill the President, and there I take it, by doing so
remove his brother from the position of Attorney General, and take
the two of them out together, would that have in any way helped
them? What realistic expectation was there that the pressure to
prosecute the Cosa Nostra would have diminished by such an act?
Mr. Salerno. Two things which we learned toward the answer.
No. 1, was their expectation; they from time to time advised that,
but I think more to the point is the actual record of what tran-
spired in this effort following the assassinations. We will add some
data to the existing charts and you will be able to see exactly what
did happen following the assassination of President Kennedy.
All of the lines which you saw in a growing and radical increase
up to 1963 go into decline, some of them a radical decline, following
the assassination of the President.
Mr. Cornwell. If then there were facts which could have created
a motive, if there were means in the control of organized crime,
can you tell us was the electronic surveillance of the FBI, which
you received, adequate to give some answers to the question of
whether or not La Cosa Nostra as an institution, in other words.
La Cosa Nostra at the commission level, at the governing body
level, could have considered or sanctioned the assassination of the
President or of Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mr. Salerno. My professional opinion, based on the electronic
surveillances and other evidence available, is that it is more than
sufficient to give a reasonable answer to that question. The ques-
tion is that all of that evidence gives no indication at all that the
national commission of La Cosa Nostra directed, approved or in
any way was concerned with the assassination of President Kenne-
dy.
Mr. Cornwell. Would it be possible that some member, some
leader, may have undertaken such a thing without the Commis-
sion's approval?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; it is very possible and as a matter of fact, at
that particular moment, in November of 1963, there was an exam-
ple of it. At that time the national commission was having a great
deal of difficulty with one of its peers, Mr, Joseph Bonnano, He
was violating, probably for the first time, the authority of that
commission. He had been ordered to appear before it three times to
explain his actions. He was refusing to do so.
He had taken action which would have required commission
approval without having that commission approval. They were
asking him to account for this and he was totally ignoring their
authority.
So there was an actual example of one such family leader violat-
ing what has been the rule up to that time, and unilaterally taking
some serious actions which were of concern to them.
Mr. Cornwell. Very briefly, if you are able to, will you tell us
how it is that in the early 1960's an organization which, according
to your testimony, is characterized by discipline, strict control,
rules, and regulations, and has at its disposal violence, could have
455
been in such a condition that one of its members could be uncon-
trollable or could do things which were not sanctioned by the
commission?
Mr. Salerno, I believe that the conditions that existed in 1963
were reflective of the effectiveness of the Federal drive during
1961, 1962 and for most of 1963. The normal smooth operation,
which had existed for more than 30 years, were interrupted. The
cracks were beginning to show in many, many ways. There was a
gang war for the first time in many years in New York — the Gallo*
Profaci war. You had the actions of Joseph Bonnano, which I have
mentioned. You had a plan on the part of one leader, Joseph
Magliocho, to assassinate two of his fellows, Carlo Gambino and
Thomas Lucchese.
So that the smooth functioning machinery of a well-oiled ma-
chine that had been in high gear for more than 30 years was
beginning to show cracks, sluggishness, interruption of its normal
activities.
Mr. Cornwell. What was the predominant reason that these
events occurred in the early 1960^s, that there was this sort of
crack in the discipline in organization?
Mr. Salerno. You had the total penetration of the organization,
informants from within the ranks that they had become aware of. I
indicated that in 1963 bugs were discovered in Las Vegas. This
gave rise to their expectation that there probably were many,
many more throughout the United States.
You had some other things that were pertinent and relate to
that — the gang war which had begun. One highlight, which took
place in the congressional halls here in Washington, just 6 weeks
before the President's assassination, was the public testimony of
Joseph Valachi, something which Attorney General Robert Kenne-
dy characterized as the greatest intelligence breakthrough in the
history of organized crime in the United States,
Mr. Valachi's testimony had been preceded by that of the Attor-
ney General. He was asking the Congress to consider more effec-
tive laws to be used against organized crime.
As bad as their condition was then, it would appear that it could
get worse. He had asked the Congress to authorize an electronic
surveillance law, he had asked the Congress to authorize an immu-
nity statute which would compel testimony.
So that in November of 1963 the picture was a very bleak one for
them.
Mr. Cornwell. If then the pressures of Bobby Kennedy and the
President during those years had created such conditions within La
Cosa Nostra they found themselves unable to control the various
families, the question then arises, could a member of that organiza-
tion, such as Trafficante or Marcello, or perhaps even an associate
such as James Hoffa, have been involved with the ELSURS, the
electronic surveillances which were conducted, adequate to answer
the question of the possible involvement of men like that?
Mr. Salerno. No. The electronic surveillances would not have
been helpful in the cases that you cite, sir. The intelligence pro-
gram was a laudable one. I would even use the word magnificent.
But as in any intelligence program, while the overall effort may be
very good, there are some weak spots, and in the three cases that
456
you mentioned, Mr. Trafflcante was never in that time period the
direct target of an electronic surveillance for an extended period.
He did show up in conversations a few times where someone else
was the target.
There was no electronic surveillance on Carlos Marcello. There
was no electronic surveillance on James Riddle Hoffa.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you. I have no further questions.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Salerno, you were here this morning and
heard Mr. Trafflcante testify that his role in the assassination plot
upon Fidel Castro was that of being an interpreter. Would you tell
us please, whether a man who holds the position that you have
described here so eloquently and articulately would perform the
role of an interpretor in that type of assassination plot?
Mr, Salerno. No sir; he would not.
Chairman Stokes. What then would his role be in such a plot?
Mr. Salerno. Sir, based on my knowledge of the three individ-
uals who were working with the CIA, I believe that the first
approach was in fact made to Mr, Roselli, Mr. Roselli could not and
would not have entertained agreeing to work for the CIA or taking
any action with the CIA without the permission of his superior,
who was Sam Giancana. I think Sam Giancana's role was to ap-
prove Mr. Roselli proceeding further,
Mr. Roselli would not have been in a position to go to someone of
the rank of Mr. Trafflcante without the intercession, without the
permission of Giancana.
I believe Giancana's real role was. No. 1, to approve Roselli's
working with the CIA, No. 2, to approach his peer, Mr. Trafflcante,
and ask for his cooperation.
Chairman Stokes. Now, also you heard Mr. Trafflcante's testimo-
ny this morning with reference to what his relationship was with
these two men, Roselli and Giancana, over the period of years, did
you?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, I did.
Chairman Stokes. And based upon what you heard, is that the
true relationship that he had with those two men?
Mr. Salerno. No; not at all. I think it would be true that he may
not have engaged in any one particular organized crime venture
with them, but he was part of the organized crime syndicate that
they were a part of.
Chairman Stokes. Would his role have been as he described here
today, that he performed these acts out of his patriotism for the
country?
Mr. Salerno. No. I think Mr. Trafflcante's testimony here has
got to be evaluated in the light of so much other evidence. If you
were going to believe Mr. Trafflcante, then Mr. Aleman is mistak-
en or he is a liar. If you are going to believe Mr. Trafflcante, then
the official from the CIA, who has given a sworn deposition, is
either mistaken or a liar.
If you are going to believe Mr. Trafflcante, then his associate,
John Roselli, and what he has revealed about that particular enter-
prise, is a liar.
It would be necessary to believe that the Government of Spain
will waste 12 men per day and the resources necessary to follow
457
and keep Mr. Trafflcante under surveillance when there is no need
to do that.
You would have to believe that various levels of government in
the United States have wasted taxpayers’ money in trying to follow
Mr. Trafflcante night and day when there is no need for that.
So, I think that you have to evaluate his testimony in view of all
of the other evidence, and I think it would be at least naive to
accept it at face value.
Chairman Stokes. Moving over to another area for a moment,
when I look at the chart there with reference to organized crime
program, where immediately after the President’s death there is
this sharp decline in terms of the program under Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, it just strikes you that this is a very striking type
of thing. Can you comment further and tell us to what do you
attribute that fact and the program just fell apart?
Mr. Salerno. I think all of those charts, and my own personal
recollections of what happened then, reflect that the success that
you see manifested there was not only the work of the individual
policemen and the agents but the leadership position that Robert
Kennedy took and afforded the entire program.
Following the death of the President, my unit in the New York
City Police Department was not reduced. FBI men were not trans-
ferred en masse to do something else, but the leadership was not
there, the driving force was not there, the commitment in govern-
ment at a very high level was not there, and I believe that is
reflected in those charts more than anything else.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you. My time has expired.
The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Preyer.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As I understand it, Mr. Salerno, you have testified that the Cosa
Nostra had the means to carry out something like the assassina-
tion and you have given us a description of those means and its
organization, and you have also indicated that you thought it has
the motive to carry it out. You introduced a number of exhibits
into evidence which we haven’t had the opportunity to go over in
detail. But looking through the exhibits that I have here, there is
just one which I would like to call attention to, which seems to me
related strongly to the motive angle, and I would like to ask you to
give us a little description of it.
It is the one that states on February 8, 1962, Angelo Bruno and
Willie Weisburg discussed the Kennedys. This is at page 1 under
tab ELSURS re Kennedy.
Mr. Salerno. Yes sir.
Mr. Preyer. At that meeting Weisburg says this:
See what Kennedy done. With Kennedy a guy should take a knife, like one of the
other guys, and stab and kill the ( ) where he is now. Somebody should kill
the ( ), I mean it. This is true, honest to God, it is about time to go. But I tell
you something, I hope I get a week’s notice, I will kill, right in the ( ), in the
White House, ^mebody has got to get rid of this ( ),
And then Bruno responds to Weisburg’s statement with the fol-
lowing story.
What I would like to ask you is to briefly tell us who Angelo
Bruno was at the time, who Weisburg is — incidentally this is JFK
exhibit F-618 — and then if you would, give us Bruno’s response to
458
Weisburg's statement, that somebody's got to get rid of this ( )
and just explain to us what your understanding of his response is.
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir, Mr. Bruno at that point in time was, as
shown on that chart, the head of the La Cosa Nostra family in
Philadelphia.
His response basically is a very philosophical one. He tells an old
story. You don't want it verbatim do you?
Mr. Preyer. No; if you could just describe it.
Mr. Salerno. Yes; he said when things are bad under one king,
some people might view him as being a bad king. However, another
point of view is that he is a good king because you think things are
bad now and when there is a succession things get worse. And
when there is a succession things get worse, so the man that you
think is a bad king is really a good king, because if anything
happens to him, then his son will succeed and things will get still
worse.
It is a very philosophical point of view, but as I indicated earlier
today, I think you have to read these ELSURS because there is
another one in that packet which is 1 year later and Mr. Bruno 1
year later, in early 1963, is not very philosophical at all. He de-
scribes himself as being crucified and Mr. Bruno is making very
serious plans to follow his predecessor and go to Italy for perma-
nent residence and he is not coming back.
Mr. Bruno expresses that point of view to a colleague in New
Jersey, Jerry Catena, in which he said, ''It is all over for us; I am
going to Italy, and you should go too, Jerry," and Mr. Catena
responds that Bruno is probably right but because his family would
be unhappy there, that he is unlikely to follow the same lead.
One year later Bruno has stopped being philosophical and he is
getting ready to leave the United States.
Mr. Preyer. So that to Weisburg's statement, somebody ought to
get rid of Robert Kennedy, Bruno, in effect, answers, we shouldn't
get rid of him because whoever succeeds him will be even worse
than he was from the mob's point of view.
Mr. Salerno. That is what the philosophical story reflects.
Mr. Preyer. So his motive was not to get rid of him because
something worse might happen. When he later decided to go to
Italy and became more disillusioned with Kennedy, he still decided
to go to Italy rather than change his mind about his motive; that
is, he didn't say in that later exhibit, did he, we should kill him; he
said, I will go to Italy?
Mr. Salerno. No; the indications are that when things got very,
very bad that Bruno would have made the choice to leave the
country; that would not necessarily be the choice that all his peer
group made.
Mr. Preyer. I think I used my 5 minutes.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired. The
gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Salerno,
for an exceptionally fine description and detail. I have several
questions I would like to ask. First of all this morning, Mr. Traffi-
cante testified that ''they lived with me" in terms of their surveil-
lance. That seems to be at variance with your testimony. Would
459
you care to elaborate or substantiate or negate Mr, Trafficante or
perhaps adjust
Mr. Salerno. I think there is always a tendency to slightly
exaggerate when people come to feel they are getting some law
enforcement attention. However, we do have his associate, Mr.
Giancana, who actually went into Federal court and indicated that
he was under the same kind of intense surveillance — bumper to
bumper tail it's referred to, with one car immediately behind the
other. He actually got a Federal judge to order the FBI, that if they
were going to follow Mr. Giancana on a golf course, as they did,
that the FBI would be required to leave a foursome between their
golf playing group and his group. That ruling was overturned on
appeal.
Mr. Fithian. So it is your testimony then that Mr. Trafficante
was not sufficiently, carefully monitored as to tell us one way or
the other whether or not he might have been involved in any plot
against President Kennedy?
Mr. Salerno, I would answer that this way, sir: I personally was
a little bit disappointed to learn that in that time period, he had
not been the subject of an electronic surveillance. I would like to
also point out, however, that being able to place someone under
electronic surveillance is subject to so many conditions: The type of
movements the man engages in, the actual physical circumstances
of where he spends his time; this kind of work is not as easily done
as nonprofessionals who have not engaged in it sometimes assume.
Mr. Fithian. Are you then directing your assessment of either
omission or insufficient coverage so as to give us the story, primar-
ily on the lack of electronic surveillance, telephonic monitoring?
Mr. Salerno. I would say that, created a big void in the total
coverage that was being given.
Mr. Fithian. Can you explain why, if Trafficante is in the place
that you put him in organized crime, that such an electronic sur-
veillance activity would be somehow overlooked?
Mr. Salerno. No; I can't answer that question, sir.
Mr. Fithian. You said that, and have apparently, a very high
regard for the level of governmental activity in 1963 and you show
us charts, and the like, apparently a great deal of pressure was, as
we know, put on La Cosa Nostra in those days. I know this is a
little outside the purview of this committee, but it is a rare oppor-
tunity for a Member of the House to have a chance to ask you a
question like this. How would you suggest that we try to recoup the
good old days of 1963?
Mr. Salerno. I think we should take a look at why it was
successful and try to duplicate the circumstances as much as we
can within our constitutional framework of law. There is no ques-
tion that the Federal agencies were coordinated. Cooperation be-
tween agencies is not enough in this kind of an effort. They have to
be coordinated. Recent evidence by Mr. Civiletti of the Department
of Justice before a congressional committee indicated that he was
somewhat disappointed in the level of willingness of the U.S. De-
partment of Labor to be more aggressive in organized crime in
labor matters. That testimony was given in April of this year. I
think it is a lot easier for an Attorney General whose brother is
460
the President to make sure that all of the agencies of the Federal
Government that should be playing a role are.
In other words, you have to go beyond the Attorney General.
There has to be that kind of commitment in the White House, is
really what is necessary.
Mr. Fithian. Is it your impression that the statutory changes
since 1963 or 1964 with regard to wiretaps and with regard to
certain kinds of activities has contributed, or is it just a lack of
willingness that has contributed to our present state of pretty
much doing nothing, as far as I can see.
Mr. Salerno. No; I think the statute law is actually better and
stronger today that it was in 1963. In those days, that electronic
surveillance which took place was for intelligence purposes only.
Now under title III of the Organized Crime Bill and Safe Streets
Act, not only can you get the authorization from the court, but now
you can bring the results into court and use it as evidence, some-
thing that was not possible in 1963.
In my home State of New York, for example, the law, as inter-
preted at that time by the Supreme Court, said, fine, you in New
York State have a State wiretap law. You get authority from a
judge, fine. The authority is given to the police department of the
city of New York, so you, Ralph Salerno, can execute the court
order; you can tell your commander about it; he can tell his com-
mander about it; and he can tell the police commissioner about it
because you are all part of a single entity known as the police
department of the city of New York. But if I took that evidence to
Mr. Klein in the prosecutor's office in New York County, and we
proceeded to tell a judge and jury about it, the Supreme Court had
said that we would be in violation of 605. So I would much prefer
the current status of carefully controlled wiretapping but that
amount which you can do, you can use as evidence in court, which
we could not do.
The confessions of murder that we listened to could not be used
for the purposes of evidence. The legislation that Robert Kennedy
requested in 1963 was some time in coming, but it has arrived. We
have the wiretap law that he recommended; we have the immunity
law. So I have no argument with current statutory law, I think it is
there. I don't think the commitment is there.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Fithian. I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 3 additional
minutes.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, the gentleman is recog-
nized.
Mr. Fithian. I believe a little bit ago you said that Roselli, by the
structure of things, had to get permission from Giancana.
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir.
Mr. Fithian. To proceed. And that Giancana would, I believe you
said, ask his peer, Trafficante, about proceeding. Is that because of
a regional jurisdictional thing or is it because of a personal rela-
tionship that you have perceived between Giancana and Traffi-
cante.
Mr. Salerno. A combination of both. They were peers but the
activity, the initial activity would take place with the Cuban com-
461
munity that was in exile from Cuba. Mr. Trafficante had the best
contacts there, and it would be — although Miami is generally re-
ferred to as an open city, southern Florida is generally considered
to be within Mr, Trafficante’s sphere of influence. So it would be a
combination of he had the best contacts to the Cubans, plus the
fact you would be operating in south Florida where he could be
extremely helpful.
Mr. Fithian. And Giancana’s territory
Mr. Salerno. Chicago.
Mr. Fithian. In just Chicago, he didn’t have any other?
Mr, Salerno, He had interests elsewhere. He would have had
interests in Nevada, that’s to a certainty.
Mr. Fithian. Is the machine or the commission as smoothly
functioning now as it was prior to the RFK pressure 1962 and
1963?
Mr. Salerno. It is functioning much better than it was in 1963,
and I must add, as I indicated in my testimony, I don’t believe that
our level of knowledge is as good today as it was in 1963 because of
the limits that do exist for electronic surveillance. In other words,
electronic surveillance — solely for the purpose of intelligence gath-
ering — it is forbidden by the law. You must specify the specific
crime, and the law goes further than that. Even if you have not
used up your entire time period of authority, if you have made an
allegation as to a certain crime, as soon as you have received the
evidence of that crime, you are expected to sign off.
I don’t know if that implies that criminals 5 minutes later will
not commit a second crime, but that is the requirement of the law.
Mr. Fithian. Finally, if everything seems to be functioning
smoothly, how then do we account for Roselli’s violent death and
Giancana’s death which, in the minds of many, are related rather
specifically to what we are doing here?
Mr. Salerno. I think there is a great deal of speculation as to
the actual causes of both Mr, Rosellf s and Mr. Giancana’s deaths. I
don’t think anybody, except the people who were responsible for it,
know whether it was because of their involvement with the CIA,
whether it was because of testimony they had ^ven or were pre-
pared to give, or whether it was a local organized crime matter
that we may not even be aware of
I have my own hypothesis about the method of Mr. Roselli’s
death. Mr. Roselli was cut up and put into an oil drum and his
automobile was found at the International Airport. My hypothesis
is that being put in an oil drum and buried at sea, his body was not
supposed to be found. So if it had been successful, we would have
had the absence, the unexplained absence of Mr. Roselli with the
red herring of his automobile being at the airport suggesting the
possibility that he was voluntarily a fugitive who had left the
country before he would be deported somewhere that he didn’t
want to go.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has again expired.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Edgar.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I apologize for not being here during the full extent of your
testimony, but I do have a few questions I would like to put to you.
You indicate in the charts the high level of activity of the Justice
35-379 0 - 79-30
462
Department during the period of 1962, 1963, and 1964 in moving
out against organized crime figures; is that not correct?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir.
Mr. Edgar. And you indicated to Mr. Fithian's question that you
felt, as part of where we ought to go from here, is to try to
recapture the same skills and tools that we had in those years; is
that not correct?
Mr. Salerno. Not so much the skills and the tools, sir, as the
dedication and commitment.
Mr. Edgar. I wonder if you could explain then why it seems to
me, as one member of this committee, that there was a great deal
of confusion, mistakes, in terms of the sharing of the surveillance
or the secret information between the Secret Service, the FBI, the
CIA and whether or not you would go so far as to say that the
Justice Department and agencies of this Nation did a good job in
coordinating with each other?
Mr. Salerno. I think that if one were to inspect whatever the
official level of sharing and cooperation is, you would get a distort-
ed and mistaken picture as against what actually happened be-
tween working agents on different levels of government.
The Federal agencies are just that, Federal agencies. They have
to deal with local and State police departments all over the United
States. Therefore, the official position of a Federal agency has to be
similar to that of a convoy that we used in World War II; 300 ships
are going to move together for protection. The maximum speed of
the convoy has got to be the speed of the slowest ship otherwise
you will leave him behind. Therefore, what Federal agencies are
willing to share as a matter of policy has got to be the speed of the
slowest ship. How much information will you g^ve to the most
corrupt police department or the most suspect police department in
the United States.
It has been my experience that de facto, the FBI particularly and
other Federal
Mr. Edgar. Could the photographers move so I can see the
witness.
Mr. Salerno. The FBI particularly and other Federal agencies
very carefully determine different levels of confidence that they
can extend and then are very generous in extending cooperation,
information and even engaging in coordinated efforts in joint oper-
ations together.
Mr. Edgar. I don't want to pursue this any further, but I do note
for the record that 17 FBI agents were reprimanded privately
because Oswald didn't make the security index and, yet, informa-
tion was available to many of those agents to put him on that list.
The Secret Service had information about Oswald that was differ-
ent from the FBI's information, and I would suggest that if we
move back to that level that there be some way that there could be
coordination and collaboration between agencies so that as we
move toward aggressive action, that aggressive action is a coordi-
nated effort.
Let's move to another issue. In terms of your expertise, is there a
likelihood that someone of the nature of Jack Ruby would be
helped with his labor problems by someone in the underworld, and.
463
further, is it unreasonable to expect that the underworld might use
someone like Jack Ruby to do a job for them?
Mr. Salerno. Well, I think Jack Ruby turning to someone in the
underworld for help in a labor matter is not unrealistic. Many
people do that every day. Many businessmen will buy labor peace,
they will ignore collective bargaining; they will ignore all the
agencies of government; and if they really want something done,
they hire the Godfather.
Carlo Gambino, not in the underworld but in the upper world,
was a labor consultant, business firms paid him as much as $40,000
for help in one labor matter. I can tell you that Carlo Gambino
doesn't know the difference between Samuel Gompers and Ringo
Starr. That is how much he knows about labor but he is a Godfa-
ther and he has interjected himself in labor matter where miracu-
lously the strike is headed off, or if it is already ongoing, it has
come to an end. So Jack Ruby turning to someone in the under-
world for help is not unrealistic at all.
There was a second part to your question.
Mr. Edgar. If they did that, would they expect an 5 d;hing in
return or would it be likely for them to go to someone who, just a
few days ago a captain from the Dallas Police Department de-
scribed as a buffoon and would suggest the underworld would
never hire someone like that to do an)d:hing for them.
In your experience, would the underworld ever use someone like
a Jack Ruby to do an action for them?
Mr. Salerno. I went through the typical representative gangland
slaying and nothing in what I had to say fits the assassination of
the President. I didn’t have an opportunity to give you three excep-
tions to that rule. The acid blinding of Victor Riesel in New York
City was an organized crime motivated crime. It was an exception
to the rule. They didn’t keep it with trusted professionals. That
was a contract offered for $2,000, and someone took $1,000 off that
and offered $1,000 to a second man who offered $500 of it to a low
level burglar in the city of New York who was an addict at that
time.
That is anathema in organized crime, to have anything to do,
particularly in 1955, with a drug addict. What happened there was,
the young man who did the actual blinding of Mr. Riesel, didn’t
know the organized crime figure that had sponsored it; never met
him. He was himself burned with acid. He got his $500. He went to
gambling casinos in Youngstown, Ohio, came back broke, needed
more money and then became a potential threat. And the best
indication is that he was killed — he was killed — the best indication
is he was killed by the middleman who had worked between he and
organized crime.
If he becomes a problem back to the organized crime figure, they
would be in jeopardy. So he was killed.
We have another example in the shooting of Joseph Columbo
before 85,000 people in Columbus Circle in New York. That homi-
cide was committed by a black man named Jerome Johnson who
was himself immediately killed probably by a Columbo bodyguard.
A number of people jumped on Mr. Johnson. A crowd of bodies
went down and shots went off. There is no question in my mind — I
was one block away — when I heard that a black man had shot
464
Joseph Columbo, I said Joseph Gallo did that. We knew that
Joseph Gallo haa oeen entering into alliances with black crm ‘nals
that he had mei in orison. But once again, an unhapp}^ e. 'ng
when there is a violation that goes awaj'^ from the rule.
We have one in Kansas City, four young black men were hired to
kill a witness in a Federal gambling case, and they were told by
the low level La Cosa Nostra figure who was going to pay them.
$1,000 to do that, that Mr. Landi, the victim, had to be killed
because he was a witness in a Federal case. Those four young men
were caught. So we have some exceptions where it appears to be a
mistake, at least for the people who engaged in the crime because
they are either caught or are themselves killed.
The death of President Kennedy does not fit a typical gangland
homicide, but there are some dramatic parallels to the exceptions
where low level figures, nondependable, nondescript people are
used.
Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent for 3 addi-
tional minutes. I have some very brief questions I would like to
ask.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, the gentleman is recog-
nized for an additional 3 minutes.
Mr. Edgar. Just to clarify that previous question, the question
was, would they use someone like Ruby to kill Oswald, and not so
much the Oswald personality as it would be to use a person like
Jack Ruby, after getting a favor from the underworld to kill
Mr. Salerno. It fits the Riesel case, yes.
Mr. Edgar. Let me ask a couple of questions about Mr. Oswald.
In your opinion, is it enough for Oswald to have had an uncle by
the name of Charles Moret, who is a bookie, to in any way link
Oswald to organized crime?
Mr. Salerno. I think it is a single fact on which you cannot base
any serious premise. If it can be joined with other facts in a
preponderance of evidence, then you might be able to come up with
a responsible conclusion.
Mr. Edgar. Well, then, let me raise the second possible connec-
tion, and that is with David Ferrie, who worked in the same
building that Oswald was in for a time, at least it is alleged that
that occurred.
Would that have been enough of a connection?
Mr. Salerno. By itself no, but again in concert with many, many
other facts it might.
Mr. Edgar. Moving to the question again about Mr. Ruby, it is
interesting for us to examine the relationship, if any, between a
Mr. Trafficante and a Jack Ruby. Would it have been the custom
for somebody like Trafficante, who is at one level, to have any
association with somebody like Ruby? Would that be a custom or a
norm?
Mr. Salerno. Without any intermediary who might have known
them both and introduced one to the other, it would be very, very
unlikely. Jack Ruby cannot be characterized as an organized crime
figure in any way in my estimation. Jack Ruby would not have
made a pimple on the back of the neck of a real organized crime
figure.
465
Mr. Edgar. One final question then. Mr. Aleman yesterday
raised in a final question that there was no doubt in his mind that
it would be possible for organized crime to have worked with
rather than against, but with Fidel Castro, to turn around and go
after someone like the President of the United States.
In your opinion, would it have been the custom, or is it the
custom, of organized crime, to at some point work violently against
someone, in this case the regime of Fidel Castro, and at other times
for expediency work with someone, and in this case Fidel Castro,
for their ends?
Mr. Salerno. Yes; I have seen that done. I have seen that done
in a gang war where some people switch sides more than once and
totally reversed their loyalties.
Mr. Edgar. You recall the Aleman testimony from yesterday.
What is the likelihood of Mr. Trafficante, in your opinion, ever
making that kind of statement to Mr. Aleman?
Mr. Salerno. I would have to know more about their relation-
ship. If it was as limited as Mr. Trafficante says, I would say no. If
it was to the extent that Mr. Aleman described, it would be believ-
able.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you.
No further questions, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Salerno, can you tell us — I believe you said earlier this
morning, in response to something that was said on television
about organized crime being larger than, as big as United States
Steel, something of that sort, the comment was made it is bigger
than United States Steel. Was that the comment?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir, it was made by Meyer Lansky to his wife.
Chairman Stokes. Well, is that statement true?
Mr. Salerno. I don’t know the value of United States Steel. I do
know this, sir: That if one takes hard data, hard numbers, such as
the records that are seized in gambling raids, take the information
that we do have, what is the price of heroin, what is the price of
cocaine, we know that because undercover men are making such
purchases.
If we take those records which have been seized in loan sharking
cases, if we take those records where there have been convictions
for kickbacks that were paid in obtaining loans from the Teamsters
Union, I think if you take hard data and from them make the most
conservative national projections, organized crime in the United
States is an industry that is grossing billions of dollars per year
and I think the net profit is extremely significant. There are some
operations where the net profit is comparatively small. In book-
making, you are making, 4 V 2 percent of your total gross as your
gross profit. In narcotics you are talking on the importation level
of the importer making five times his investment.
You are also talking, when you are talking about heroin, you are
talking about a product which on the street is selling for between
150 and 200 times the value of gold per ounce even at today’s
figure for gold. So the numbers that we do know about — we know
that it takes 6 tons of heroin to supply every addict in the United
States, or something in that range. You start taking it per ounce
on the street level and going through the most conservative projec-
466
tions you are talking about a multibillion dollar industry which
has never been adequately studied by economists who can write
books about what happens if the prime interest rate goes up IV 2
percent, what happens if unemployment goes down 2 percent, and
here is a multibillion dollar industry and they have never studied
it simply because the data is not easily available, and you cannot
get a mountain of empirical data with three graduate students
mailing out 2,000 questionnaires and conducting 200 interviews in
a summer.
Chairman Stokes. You mentioned Meyer Lansky. Who is Meyer
Lansky?
Mr. Salerno. Meyer Lansky was a young person who came over
to the United States at a very young age, he came over at the age
of 6 or 9 from Poland, with Jewish parents. He lives on the lower
East Side of Manhattan, which at that time was a Jewish ghetto.
Mr. Lansky demonstrated with some Jewish criminals what these
Italian criminals have demonstrated, what is demonstrated today
in what is beginning to be referred to as the Black Mafia what is
being witnessed out in California, with a group that names itself
the Mexican Mafia; that there are times when immigrant groups,
and I mentioned Blacks because some sociologists say they are the
most recent immigrants to the urban areas of our country.
Unfortunately in the United States, we give the greatest upward
mobility to those immigrants who are willing to go into a life of
crime as against what we offer immigrants who will be dutiful
citizens and work hard.
In other words, what I am saying, sir, is that the name of the
game called organized crime has remained constant. Over the
years we changed the names of the players, their skin color or
language spoken.
Meyer Lansky became a very wealthy man during the prohibi-
tion era when what we were calling 2 years ago, during our Bicen-
tennial year, what we call today, the sacred document, that is the
Constitution of the United States was being sneered at, ignored,
and made a travesty of by so many American citizens and even a
larger number simply ignored all that.
Meyer Lansky was a bright man who learned that if you engage
in a life of crime and select your crime carefully and insulate your
role you can become a very, very wealthy man. Meyer Lansky had
interests in Cuba. You heard Mr. Trafficante mention the name of
his brother Jake Lansky.
Meyer Lansky has dealt with heads of government. Mr. Batista
in one case, with the governing council in the Bahamas, to where
he moved some of his gambling operations. He is a brilliant man in
the shrewd sense of the word, who has made an awful lot of money,
who has kind of thumbed his nose at the law.
He fled the United States when three indictments were coming
down against him. He went to Israel. He used the Jewish Law of
Return, which says any person born of Jewish mother can go to
Israel and file for citizenship. He did that. It was resisted by the
Attorney General in Israel. The case was argued before the Su-
preme Court of Israel.
There is one exception to the Jewish Law of Return and that is if
the person's residence or citizenship in Israel can be considered to
467
be a threat to the State, he can be denied the application for
citizenship, and he can be put out of Israel, as happened to Meyer
Lansky.
I think they stretched the law a little bit. If they had let Meyer
Lansky stay there and bring all his money there, 20 years from
now there would be two statutes in Jerusalem, one would be Moshe
Dayan and the other one would be Meyer Lansky, because he
might have helped them buy up the Arabs.
Chairman Stokes. You mentioned earlier, the victims of orga-
nized crime. Who are the victims of organized crime?
Mr. Salerno. The victims of organized crime are many. They
come from all walks of life. You can be victimized, if you are a
prominent businessman, that they might like to move in on, but I
think the people from whom they make money and who they
victimize in one form or another come from all walks of life.
I am looking for something that I put among my notes and I am
very happy for the opportunity to be allowed to look for it, because
it was stated much more eloquently than I can by Dr. Martin
Luther King.
This is what Dr. Martin Luther King wrote eloquently in an
article entitled Beyond the Los Angeles Riots, Next Stop the
North,'' in the Saturday Review, November 13, 1965;
The most grievous charge against municipal police is not brutality, although it
exists. Permissive crime in the ghettos is the nightmare of the slum family. Permis-
sive crime is the name for the organized crime that flourishes in the ghettos,
designed, directed, and activated by the white national crime syndicates operating
numbers, narcotics, and prostitution rackets freely in protective sanctuaries of the
ghettos.
Because no one, including the police, cares particularly about ghetto crime, it
pervades every area of life.
I think what Dr. King recognizes in that comment is something
that is not easily demonstrated in charts.
The Kennedy administration had an entire program of policies.
The fight against organized crime was one. The improvement of
the civil rights of all citizens was another. An attempt to help the
poor was a third. But those were not three separate and unrelated
programs, they were all part of the same drive that the Kennedys
were trying to achieve.
Chairman Stokes. I just have one further question.
Lewis Me Willie testified in these hearings yesterday, I believe, or
the day before, that after he left Cuba and came back to the States
he worked at the Cal-Nevada Lodge. Who owns the Cal-Nevada
Lodge?
Mr. Salerno. I don't know who owns it today. In 1963, Frank
Sinatra was a 50 percent partner. He also had nine points in the
Sands Hotel in 1963. That became a matter of record in the press
because in 1963 he got into a little bit of trouble with the Nevada
Gambling Commission. Mr. Giancana had been his guest at the
Lodge and at his home and the licensing authorities were threaten-
ing to suspend the licenses at both institutions if Mr. Sinatra did
not promise in writing to break off his friendship with Mr, Gian-
cana.
Mr. Sinatra elected not to break off his friendship, not to jeopar-
dize his partners, and he divested himself of his interests.
Chairman Stokes. My time has expired.
468
The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. McKinney.
Mr. McKinney. Just one brief area following through on the
questioning of my friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. Edgar.
It has sometime been suggested that Premier Castro was only too
aware of the attempts, or at least aware of the theory that the
Cosa Nostra could be used because of their gambling losses result-
ing from his takeover of Cuba to dispose of him. It has been
suggested that Mr, Castro appealed to reason, and may have said
all you have lost is a few gambling casinos, whereas I run Cuba,
which is only 90 miles from the most unprotected coastline in the
United States and, therefore, is the most logical place from which
to supply drugs to this Nation, so don't fight me, join me.
Do you have any information or any feeling as to whether or not
the Cuban Government or the Premier of Cuba actually are in-
volved with the Mafia in any way in supplying drugs to this
country?
Mr. Salerno. I have no direct evidence of that; no, sir.
Mr. McKinney. Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. I just have one more question, Mr. Chairman.
During his testimony yesterday Mr. Aleman suggested that Traf-
ficante, at least I thought he did, suggested Trafficante was per-
haps working in cooperation with Castro in the 1960's. From what
you know about the Cosa Nostra, how likely is it that a situation
like this, that is, Trafficante, a Cosa Nostra leader, who had lost
very considerable amounts of money and property, with the rise of
Castro to power, would be working with him in any way?
Mr. Salerno. The entire name of the game in organized crime is
to make money. If Mr. Aleman had added to his opinion some
indication, some evidence, showing where and how Santos Traffi-
cante might benefit in terms of money, I think his argument would
become much more believable.
If we could join a different answer to Mr. McKinney's question, if
there were some evidence that Santos Trafficante is using Cuba in
fact as a base for narcotics and profiting greatly from that, then he
would certainly be able to be considered as being guilty of what
Mr. Aleman set forth, but he is not doing it for a reason where he
doesn't see some gain.
Mr. Fithian. Well, now, would this have been the kind of activi-
ty that was sufficiently important that the commission approval
would be required?
Mr. Salerno. What kind of activity specifically, sir?
Mr. Fithian. In other words, if Trafficante were going to be
working with Castro on any number of things, would that, the fact
he is working with another head of state, would that be important
enough in and of itself?
Mr. Salerno. No; people in organized crime have dealt on very
high levels with other officials.
Mr. Fithian. So it would be the nature of the activity that would
determine
Mr. Salerno. And only if it put him in conflict with some vested
interest that some other leader in organized crime would have. If
no conflict, he is free to do that.
469
Mr. Fithian. Then the size and the scope of the project is not
really what requires commission approval, it is whether or not that
might somehow impinge upon somebody else’s turf?
Mr. Salerno. Yes, sir.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Salerno.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Edgar. I just have one clarifying question.
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Edgar.
Mr. Edgar. Earlier we talked about the possibility of whether or
not Aleman's recollection was accurate or whether Trafficante's
understanding of his statements were accurate, and you indicated
that if the meetings were as frequent as Aleman had suggested it
might have been a possibility that Trafficante would have divulged
statements indicating what Aleman alleges, but it was rare.
We got information yesterday from Aleman that no more than
three meetings occurred. You would not describe that as frequent?
Mr. Salerno. No; I didn't mean to mislead you. I don't think I
said it was the frequency of the meetings, it would be the nature of
the meetings. If they are in fact going to be business partners, if
Mr. Aleman is going to get a sizable loan from the Teamsters
Union, for which Mr. Trafficante would have gotten a kickback — if
Mr. Aleman is going to be for Mr. Trafficante and his friend
Angelo Bruno the medium to an open door into relationships at
high levels of the Dominican Government, where they can become
involved in business activities which would accrue to their sharing
a great deal of wealth between them, now he would be talking to a
business partner, somebody with whom he is going to make a great
deal of money, then I would expect that he might have made such
a statement.
If it was, well, I met the fellow and he asked about a loan, and
that was kind of straightened out, and we talked a little bit about
possibilities, if you take the impression that Mr. Trafficante wants
to put on the nature of their meetings, then I would discount the
possibility that it was said. But if they are going to make a great
deal of money together, if they are going to be business partners,
he might have shared such a thought with him.
Mr. Edgar. But I think it is accurate to say that Trafficante
would have been aware of Aleman's previous testimony, well, his
relationship may be in giving testimony in Chicago against some
other witnesses, and it seemed to me wouldn't it have been natural
for somebody in the Cosa Nostra not to discuss such things with
someone who may have been involved?
Mr. Salerno. No, not at all. If we are going to infer that this
man testified against Norman Rothman and Mr. Mannarino, you
might think that if that were going to be the consideration, Mr.
Trafficante would not even have found himself in the same room
with that man. The overriding consideration was ^Torget my friend
Norman Rothman, forget my colleague Mannarino, if I can make a
lot of money with this cat, I will meet him once, twice or a 100
times."
Mr. Edgar. And your earlier comment was that it was the qual-
ity of the content of the meeting and not the quantity of the
meetings?
470
Mr. Salerno. Yes sir. The fact that they were together, Mr.
Trafficante makes admission to that, and we know that that took
place even after he had given testimony against some of Mr. Traffi-
cante^s friends, I think suggests that money is the overriding con-
sideration.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you. I appreciate the response.
Chairman Stokes, Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Salerno, as a witness before our committee, at the conclusion
of your testimony you are entitled to 5 minutes. During that 5-
minute period you may in any way expand upon your testimony or
comment upon it, and I would extend to you at this time 5 minutes
for that purpose, if you so desire.
Mr. Salerno. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to mention
two things and it won't take 5 minutes.
No. 1, I would like to, through this committee, thank Attorney
General Bell and the people in the FBI with whom I, and my
colleagues on the staff dealt, for their grand cooperation, their
kindness and their courtesies.
The second thing I would like to say to this committee and for
the record is this. That from time to time when the Mafia, the Cosa
Nostra, has to be discussed, some Americans are angered by that
fact. I would like the record to show that I am one of the Ameri-
cans who is greatly angered when the necessity arises.
I resent the fact that some criminals have formed an organiza-
tion where they require that membership be limited to people of
Italian background, where they apply Italian words as a name to a
criminal organization, where they apply an Italian word for ranks
within that organization.
As I sit here looking at the committee, you are members of the
Congress, and that together with many other things, I am sure,
makes each of you proud of your roots and from whence you came.
I would just like to say that I am equally proud of mine. Thank
you, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Salerno, I would just like to say on behalf
of the committee you are obviously an eminently qualified expert
in this field. You have given some very articulate and eloquent
testimony before the committee and we want to thank you for the
services you have rendered to us.
Mr. Salerno. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Stokes. The Chair would like to take a 3 minute in-
place recess before we proceed further.
Chairman Stokes. The committee will come to order.
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. Blakey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It could be said that the
committee has now come full circle. It began with the question
''could organized crime have been involved in the plot to murder
President Kennedy?” It has run an exhaustive check of the possi-
ble conspiratorial associations of one fi^re involved in the assassi-
nation, Jack Ruby. The committee obviously has more work to do
on Ruby's associates as well as Lee Harvey Oswald's, and it will
have the opportunity to say more about them in its final report in
December.
Nevertheless, it is fair to say the committee's investigation into
the possible involvement into organized crime has been more com-
471
plete than that of the FBI or the Warren Commission in 1963 and
1964, It is also fair to comment that had this sort of investigation
taken place at that time when the evidence was fresh, it is possible,
though hardly a sure thing, that a lot more information might
have been forthcoming. But the committee must face this fact. The
question of organized crime involvement is still and open one.
Nothing that has been uncovered excludes it and much that is new
points toward it. Yet frustration may be the result of this commit-
tee’s efforts too.
To address the issues raised by this frank recognition of the
possibility of ultimate frustration and comment on the investiga-
tion of the Warren Commission and this committee, as well as the
future, the committee has invited the Hon. Burt W. Griffin to
^pear here today. Judge Griffin was an assistant counsel for the
Warren Commission. As such, he shared responsibility for the in-
vestigation of Jack Ruby and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Judge Griffin received a B.A. cum laude from Amherst College in
1954 and an LL.B. degree from Yale in 1959. Judge Griffin has
served as the Director of the Cleveland Office of Economic Oppor-
tunity, Legal Service Program, as well as the Director of the Legal
Aid ^ciety.
In January 3, 1975, he was appointed judge of the Court of
Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. It would be appropriate
at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Judge Griffin.
Chairman Stokes, Judge, I ask you to stand, please, and be
sworn. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before
this committee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth, so help you God?
Judge Griffin. I do.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you, you may be seated.
Judge Griffin, it is a real pleasure to welcome you here. Mr.
Blakey, Judge Griffin happens to be not only a long-time close
friend, but one of Cleveland’s most distinguished jurists. We wel-
come you here this afternoon, Judge.
TESTIMONY OF JUDGE BURT W. GRIFFIN, FORMER ASSISTANT
COUNSEL FOR THE WARREN COMMISSION AND JUDGE OF
THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, CUYAHOGA COUNTY, OHIO
Judge Griffin. Mr. Chairman, and my good friend, Louis Stokes.
Let me say it is a pleasure for me to be here before your commit-
tee. I say it with only one reservation, and I think, Mr. McKinney,
this may bring back some memories to you because the last time
that I had an opportunity to appear before this committee in
executive session, I was about an hour late because I found defi-
ciencies in the Metro transportation system. Last night, your com-
mittee was very kind and offered to spare me that indignity and
sent Mr. Mathews with Mr. Blakey’s car to the airport to pick me
up.
I regret to say that when we got out to Mr. Blakey’s car, it didn’t
work. And I found myself behind the car trying to push Mr. Math-
ews to get it started. So I would suggest that if there are any other
areas of investigation for this committee to undertake that there
might be some in the field of transportation.
Mr. Edgar. Would the gentleman yield at that point?
472
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. Edgar. As a very strong advocate of public transit, I think
the Metro system is getting better, and I would suggest if you are
ever in that predicament again, you might try using it. I have been
to the gentleman's city of Cleveland and you have a very fine
public transit system, I hope we can have those fine systems
throughout the Nation.
Judge Griffin. I thank you, Mr. Edgar, for the advice, and I am
sure that I will consider it seriously.
Let me say in seriousness, that the purpose of my remarks is to
discuss with the committee the question of what is the proper
process for investigating political murders that have national im-
plications. That is what I would like to reflect upon in these
minutes with the committee.
I propose to begin that inquiry with a brief discussion of what I
perceive to have been the goals of the Warren Commission and the
Warren Commission's successes and failures. And I would like to
end with some suggestions for dealing with future political mur-
ders.
It is a sad thing to think about, but I think we cannot escape the
honest judgment that we will have in this country, political mur-
ders in the future and we will, I am sorry to say, in all probability,
have Presidents who are assassinated in the future. So that I think
more important than attempting to reach a conclusion as to how
President Kennedy happened to be killed and why and who all
may have participated in that, as important as that inquiry is, the
real questions are not for the past, but the real questions for this
committee are for the future.
The Warren Commission was designed primarily to achieve four
goals. First, to establish the true facts surrounding the assassina-
tion of President Kennedy and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Second, to accomplish that mission in a manner that would satisfy
the broadest segment of influential people and the American public
in general. Third, to do it in a manner that would not unnecessar-
ily disrupt the stability of the national government and its conduct
of international affairs or jeopardize the national security. And,
fourth, to conduct this inquiry in a manner that would avoid
damaging the reputations or employment of individuals against
whom there did not exist convincing evidence of criminal conduct.
Those goals were not in every respect stated by the Commission,
but I believe that they indeed were the goals of the Commission,
and I think that the first two goals, that is, of finding the truth
and, second, of accomplishing that investigation in a manner that
would be persuasive, were actually articulated in the official Com-
mission documents.
The third goal, that is the one that related to the stability of the
National Government and the problems of national security, was
communicated by the President of the United States to Chief Jus-
tice Warren.
The fourth goal, that being a civil libertarian goal, although it
may not have been articulated in any official documents, was, in
fact, the philosophy of Chief Justice Warren, as I had the opportu-
nity to witness his conduct of the Warren Commission.
473
In a rather brief manner, I would like to summarize the reasons
for these goals, and I will be brief because I think that the reasons
are obvious, but it is perhaps worth mentioning them.
President Kennedy's death was surrounded with suspicions of
conspiratorial intrigue that could easily have fed efforts at domes-
tic and international turmoil. If the suspicions were true, there
would be a need for serious corrective action, but if the suspicions
were unfounded and were not abated, the mere suspicions could
provide strong weapons in the hands of individuals who desired to
manipulate public opinion and power for unjustified ends.
The Warren Commission began its inquiry on the very heels of
one of the most unfortunate eras in American political history. It
was what we all look back upon now as the McCarthy era. And the
conduct of investigations into matters of internal security during
that period cast not only a blot upon the conduct of senatorial
committees, but of congressional committees as well, and I think
that we — many of us, if not a vast majority of us — look back upon
that period with a great deal of embarrassment and sorrow.
There was another period which none of us is old enough to
remember where the same kind of political ambitions based upon
unfounded suspicions and fears brought the United States into war,
and that is the period of the Spanish-American War, which has
been well documented and the role that irresponsible newspaper
people had to play in the creation of that war is well known to any
student of history. So that the fears about the inability to find the
truth and to document it in a persuasive manner were not incon-
siderable or insubstantial ones, as far as the members of the
Warren Commission were concerned.
And it was important that a reliable body be established to
investigate and report honestly the facts that surrounded the
murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and of President Kennedy in order
to minimize the possibility of such disastrous consequences.
At the outset of the Warren Commission's activities, speed
seemed to be an important element in the Commission's operations.
Initially, the White House informed the Commission that it
should complete its work and make its report prior to the national
political conventions that were scheduled for the summer of 1964.
The emphasis on speed stemmed from the early perceptions of this
problem that I have been alluding to — preventing the unnecessary
disruption of public policy and political power.
At the outset, the timetable seemed reasonable, but as the scope
of the investigation became apparent, such a deadline became obvi-
ously unrealistic. The goal of speed came into conflict with the goal
of completeness, for many of the suspicions, which the obvious facts
generated, could not be explored fully in the 5 months that were
originally projected for the Warren Commission's investigation.
In retrospect, it seems to me that speed was not the political
necessity that the White House originally envisioned. The Warren
report was itself not issued until late September 1964, and I reflect-
ed as I came here today that I believe that today or tomorrow is
the 14th anniversary of the issuance of that report. This was, of
course, after both the Republican and Democratic national conven-
tions had nominated their candidates for President. And the issue
474
of the assassination of President Kennedy never became an issue in
that Presidential election campaign.
At no time prior to the report's issuance did any Member of
Congress attempt to use the uncertainties of the assassination to
oppose Johnson administration policies. So long as the Commission
was operating, the White House, in fact, achieved its goal of pre-
venting the uncertainties that surrounded the assassination from
interfering with its own conduct of public policy. I believe that the
initial emphasis on speed reflected the recollections which I have
made of McCarthyism which were still vivid to President Johnson
and members of the Commission when we began our work in early
1964,
I would like to turn at this point then to discuss the question of
how the Commission came to terminate its investigation. Pressure
for a quick report was not, in my experience, what induced the
Commission to curtail its investigation of areas that are now a
public concern and under investigation by this committee. The
reasons for stopping the investigation by the Warren Commission
were that to anyone with substantial criminal investigatory experi-
ence, and you must remember that Chief Justice Warren had been
the prosecutor of Alameda County for 20 years before he became
Governor of the State of California, to anyone with such investiga-
tive experience, the evidence seemed overwhelming that Oswald
was the assassin and the conspiracy questions that remained were
entirely speculative. They were based upon political or underworld
acquaintanceships but devoid of any concrete evidence on any par-
ticipation in a murder or in the planning of a murder.
As a practical matter, the Commission leadership decided not to
pursue further the various speculative theories on conspiracy
unless two things could be found. First, unless they could find
substantial evidence that a specific suspected conspirator had had
personal contact with Lee Oswald or Jack Ruby during the period
when that person could have counseled or assisted Oswald or Ruby
in the events of November 21-23, 1963.
And second, and the two would have to go together, unless there
was some evidence that such suspected conspirator desired to kill
President Kennedy or was involved in a common political activity
with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Although the criteria that I have mentioned were not applied at
the beginning of any line of inquiry so as to stop an exploration of
at least a minimal sort at the beginning, they were applied after
months of investigation in deciding to close out a particular line of
inquiry. It was believed by the Commission's leadership that any
further investigation not so founded would require an in-depth
probing of the life of any possible conspirator. The mere act of
continuing to investigate such individuals, would be a form of
accusation that could severly injure innocent people. It seemed
unwarranted to conduct such an in-depth investigation merely
upon speculation that a conspiratorial link might exist. The cost
and len^h of such investigation seemed immense.
The likelihood of success seemed remote and the possible in-
fringement of civil liberties seemed serious.
Those two criteria, I might point out, also became the standards
that the Commission ultimately used for concluding that ''no evi-
475
dence/’ the famous and much maligned language of the Commis-
sion report, that no evidence of any conspiracy had been found.
The committee, in my opinion, Mr. Stokes, must seriously consider
in reaching its own conclusions whether or not it is proper to
depart from the standard of proof that I suggest was followed by
the Warren Commission and whether it is proper to apply those
standards in making its own judgments as to how far to continue
any investigation.
I would like then, with that background, to turn to what I
believe to be the successes and failures of the Warren Commission,
The overriding short-term political objective of President John-
son in establishing the Warren Commission was achieved. That is,
the determination of public policy was not substantially affected by
the uncertainties of the assassination and no member of Congress
or political opponent of President Johnson was able to mobilize
public sentiment through manipulation of fears that grew out of
these uncertainties.
Second, the factfinding goal of the Warren Commission was par-
tially, if not substantially, achieved. The Commission developed an
extensive body of information about the assassination and related
events. That information not only formed the basis of the Commis-
sion's conclusion but has provided, up to this committee's com-
mencement of its investigation, the most solid evidence upon which
the Commission’s critics have relied. Almost no probative evidence
bearing upon the identity of participants in the murders has been
uncovered by the legions of Warren Commission critics. No wit-
ness, unknown at the time of the original investigation, has come
forward with information showing that any specific person assisted
or encouraged either Oswald or Ruby in their murders. The most
significant newly discovered information has been that evidence in
the possession of governmental agencies was deliberately withheld
from the Warren Commission. If that evidence had been provided
to the Commission, I personally have no doubt that our investiga-
tion, that is the investigation of the Warren Commission, would
have been extended substantially.
And I would like to point out a major success which Warren
Commission critics tend largely to ignore. That is, that the civil
liberties of Americans were conscientiously protected by the Com-
mission and the Commission did not become an official witch hunt
that destroyed the reputations and lives innocent citizens. That
success resulted both from the manner in which the Commission
conducted its inquiry and from the standards that it applied in
deciding to terminate the inquiry. This is a success, Mr. Chairman,
which I believe the select committee should recognize and would do
well to applaud, lest that accomplishment be forgot.
However, it must be recognized that a decision to terminate
governmental investigation also unleashed a private witch hunt,
and the committee must evaluate that byproduct.
Let me turn next to what I believe were the failures of the
Warren Commission. It is clear that the Warren Commission failed
to prevent the assassination from becoming a long-term political
issue.
I distinguish here between an issue that remains of public curios-
ity, such as one might say would be an issue concerning the assas-
476
sination of President Lincoln at this stage, and between that kind
of issue and an issue that actually affects in a substantial way the
time, money, and decisions of public policy and public officials.
A second failure, and a glaring failure, was its inability, the
Commission's inability, to gain full cooperation from the investiga-
tive agencies.
The committee, I know, has carefully examined the areas in
which the CIA, the FBI, and the Dallas Police Department failed to
provide candid and, I might say, loyal assistance to the Warren
Commission, and I will not attempt to go into those.
The third failure of the Commission relates to this problem of
cooperation with investigative agencies. It is the use by the Com-
mission of liaison personnel from other agencies.
In retrospect, Mr. Chairman, I believe that the Commission
needed its own staff presence on the premises of the FBI, CIA, and
the Dallas Police Department, with unrestricted access to their
files, and with freedom to speak privately and without approval to
any employee of each agency.
Instead, the FBI and the CIA established their own liaison per-
sonnel at the Commission offices. All contacts with the FBI and
CIA personnel were cleared, first through agency channels of those
agencies, and the agent's reports were reviewed by their supervi-
sors before being forwarded to the Commission.
There was, I think, at least a middle ground that the Commis-
sion might have adopted in hindsight. The investigative staffs of
those agencies might have been assigned to the Commission and
controlled by the Commission and the Commission then might
have made the decision as to how it would keep the agencies
advised of the Commission's progress, as it, the Commission
deemed appropriate.
I think there was also a failure by the Warren Commission of
investigative tactics. The style of the Commission's own staff was
in retrospect not fully one of criminal investigators. The rules that
governed the staff discouraged off the record conversations with
witnesses and emphasized almost exclusively transcribed deposi-
tions. Transcribed depositions did not lend themselves to candor, if
the deponent feared that this candor could injure him.
The Commission itself failed to utilize the instruments of immu-
nity from prosecution or prosecution for perjury with respect to
witnesses whose veracity it doubted.
In each case, the failure to have any of its own staff stationed
within the agencies, the system of agency-Commission communica-
tions, the failure to employ its own staff investigators, and the
restraints on Commission interviewing techniques, and the reluc-
tance to use immunity grants and perjury prosecutions, the Com-
mission chose an investigatory course that would cause the least
damage to individual citizens and to existing public agencies. I
believe that is the reason that the Commission chose that ap-
proach.
There was a belief among the Commission leadership that the
investigatory approaches which were rejected were likely to pro-
duce more resistance than truth from public agencies and that the
possibility of success by those rejected methods was outweighted by
477
the possible unjustified injury to individual citizens and existing
governmental operations.
You must remember, Mr. Chairman, that in those days we trust-
ed the various agencies of Government with whom we dealt, much
more than we trust them now.
At no time, however, despite these investigatory techniques did
those limitations ever prevent a Commission staff member from
making an inquiry that he believed was relevant. The consequence,
nonetheless, was the Commission was powerless to combat deliber-
ate deceit by an investigative agency.
A fifth difficulty or failure, as I look back upon the Warren
Commission, evolved from the difficulties of conducting a conspir-
acy investigation through a special commission. The investigatory
techniques that the Commission utilized were in fact the standard
investigatory techniques of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at
that time and were reasonably suited to an investigation which
depended on testimony from independent witnesses who generally
desired to tell the truth.
The primary investigatory approach utilized by the FBI in con-
nection with the murders of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey
Oswald was directly and immediately to confront a witness or a
suspect with questions. This approach, of course, was important to
preserving the memory of an honest witness, but for a possible co-
conspirator it largely served to keep any possible conspirators fully
appraised of the ongoing investigations.
To my knowledge, in that period, the FBI never established a list
of possible conspirators with either Jack Ruby or Lee Oswald, and
if it had such a list, it never placed them under surreptitious
investigation, or if it did so, the existence and nature of such
investigations was certainly never revealed to me, and I had re-
sponsibility for investigating Jack Ruby,
Nor was there any indication that the FBI in that period used its
own agents in an undercover capacity under any circumstances, or
pursued the practice in that period of our history of infiltrating
suspect groups, except through paid informants.
Indeed, it was my experience as an Assistant U.S. attorney in the
years of 1960, 1961, and 1962, that J. Edgar Hoover strongly op-
posed using his own employees in an undercover capacity. By con-
trast, during that same period of time, the U.S. Secret Service did
have its own employees trained to investigate counterfeiting by
undercover means. I think a comparison of the two agencies during
that period of time would reveal that the Secret Service had been
much more successful in investigating counterfeiting conspiracies
than the FBI had been against organized crime.
The FBI fully used its standard investigatory techniques for ap-
proximately 2 months before any member of the Warren Commis-
sion was able to initiate his own investigation. That 2-months delay
substantially undermined the ability of the Commission to investi-
gate a conspiracy.
First, obviously all tracks were cold and any conspirator had 2
months to flee or hide.
Second, all possible suspects and conspirators had ample time to
learn what direction the Government’s investigation was taking.
35-379 O - - 31
478
Third, after 2 months the investigatory agents of the FBI were
frankly impatient, since they were convinced that they had done a
thorough job and that a staff of Commission amateurs could do no
better.
Looking backward, under those circumstances, the only way to
investigate successfully a possible conspiracy was either to gain the
complete cooperation of the original investigators, in a total reexa-
mination of their work, or to employ a new staff of investigators.
Even then the timelag would pose serious problems. But once a
truly collaborative investigative team was created, it would have
been necessary to develop systematically a set of possible conspir-
acy theories and conspiracy suspects.
The development of sound theories and reasonable suspects re-
quired a Commission staff that was knowledgeable about the pri-
mary suspect groups, pro- and anti-Castro groups in the United
States and Mexico, Cuban counterintelligence and espionage,
Soviet counterintelligence and espionage, the possible involvement
of organized crime figures with such foreign groups, and the link-
ages of all those groups to the FBI, CIA, and the Dallas police
force.
The Commission itself employed only two persons with any sub-
stantial background in any of those areas, and that was only in the
area of organized crime.
We did have two individuals who had been members of organized
crime staff in the U.S. Department of Justice.
With respect to any conspiracy related to Cuban or Soviet
groups, the Commission had no st^f members with past expertise
and relied entirely on the CIA and FBI for assistance. That lack of
in-house expertise, in my view, precluded developing sensible work-
ing hypotheses about conspiracies which could be investigated in
an economical manner.
If such a staff could have developed workable hypotheses for
conspiracies and for specific suspects, a special investigative ap-
proach would also have had to have been developed. The approach
probably would have had to rely heavily upon clandestine surveil-
lance and infiltration of suspected groups and individuals.
An investigation that involved infiltration and clandestine sur-
veillance could not have been tied to a political timetable and
would have taken years, not months to complete.
Certain basic records, such as a telephone call records, hotel
registrations, transportation manifests, immigration records, photo-
graphs of the murder scene, and audio recordings would have had
to have been comprehensively acquired for possible future use and
analysis whether or not they had any immediate evidentiary value.
This approach would have required a different staff and a different
relationship to the President and to the Attorney General.
The staff would have needed a variety of skills besides legal,
including knowledge of individuals probably associated with the
primary suspect groups.
Time commitments would have been for years rather than for
months. To avoid being threatened by existing agencies, the Com-
mission staff would have required close and direct support from the
President and from the Attorney General so that impediments
479
from reluctant investigative agencies could have been resolved
with the full support of the President and the Attorney General.
A sixth failure or difficulty that I would like to address arises
from the prosecution of Jack Ruby. Any investigation of Jack Ruby
by the Warren Commission posed an immediate conflict with both
the Dallas County prosecutor and the defense in the trial of Jack
Ruby. The most serious conflicts were with the right of the State of
Texas to prosecute Ruby to the fullest and with the right of Ruby
to a fair trial by a Dallas jury unaffected by the actions of the
Warren Commission.
The interests of Ruby in a fair trial precluded the Commission
from taking any testimony from witnesses associated with that
trial until the trial was over. It also dictated that the Commission
itself not draw conclusions on Ruby^s motives and not publicly
implicate him in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, if he
were in fact so implicate, until all legal avenues were exhausted
in his trial for the murder of Lee Oswald.
The most important long-range considerations that grows out of
the Ruby dilemma was whether or not to seek to obtain immunity
for Ruby in his testimony concerning the assassination of President
Kennedy once he was convicted of murdering Oswald, in exchange
for testimony concerning the assassination.
The Commission did not have the power to grant this immunity,
since the prosecution for the murder of President Kennedy was
controlled by the State of Texas.
The Commission, moreover, chose not to exercise even its influ-
ence to gain such immunity. Nonetheless, there came a time after
the Commission was disbanded and after Ruby's judicial appeals
for the murder of Oswald were exhausted, when that issue, the
question of immunity, could have been reconsidered, but at that
point no public official or public agency existed which had an
official interest or responsibility to review the question.
Mr. Chairman, I might interrupt my formal remarks at this
point, because as I am sitting here speaking I am also looking at
my watch, and I understand that you have a plane to catch, and if
I were you sitting there, I would be very itchy and wonder how
long this friend of yours was going to go on, and if you would like
me to stop at this point so that you can intervene, I would be
happy to do that.
Chairman Stokes. Judge, I would really like to get the benefit of
your full statement, because I would like to put a couple of ques-
tions to you and then, of course, with your permission, I would at
that time make my concluding remarks.
Judge Griffin. All right.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you.
Judge Griffin. Mr. Chairman, the next problem I would like to
raise for the committee's consideration, which I regard as a failure
of the Warren Commission, grows out of the problems of publica-
tion of the findings of the Warren Commission. I believe that the
most serious failures of the Commission were not in the effective-
ness with which it investigated the facts surrounding the murders
of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. I believe even if
more ^gressive and independent means were utilized for such an
investigation, that no different conclusions would have been
480
reached as to the participants in the crime or as to whether or not
there was a conspiracy.
The problems of proof of a conspiracy are probably too great or
else the suspicions with which this committee is dealing are in fact
not well-founded. The select committee, I would suggest in those
regards, should consider the possible reality that under the Ameri-
can system of civil liberties and the requirement of proof beyond a
reasonable doubt, that it is virtually impossible to prosecute or
uncover a well-conceived and well-executed conspiracy.
The FBI, and I beg to differ with the optimistic projections of Mr.
Salerno, certainly up until 1963, and I don’t see that much im-
provement since then, has almost totally failed in its efforts direct-
ly to prosecute the organized commission of crime. The few success-
ful prosecutions of effective criminal conspiracies that have oc-
curred in America almost always result from the accidental discov-
ery — accidental discovery of a crucial incriminating fact, such as
was the case in the Abel spy case, where a young boy found a radio
transmitter, as I recall, in a trash can in New York, and that is
how the Federald Bureau of Investigation came upon Mr. Abel.
Or a second and much more common method of solving and
prosecuting criminal conspirators, of course, stems from the will-
ingness of a convicted conspirator to testify against his confeder-
ates. It is much better if you have the convicted conspirator facing
the death penalty than if you have him facing the penalty of
perjury.
There was I think, though a reasonable possibility that the
American public could have better understood and accepted the
integrity of the Commission’s work. The select committee may well
find deficiencies in the Commission’s investigative technique but I
would urge the committee to consider seriously if the Commission
staff was honest and industrious in its efforts, and if substantial
possibilities really existed that any different relevant facts could
have been uncovered at that period, especially given the problems
of cooperation with the CIA, and perhaps also with the FBI, and
especially even with that cooperation but without an individual
who was willing to confess. I really doubt that those questions can
sincerely be resolved against the Warren Commission.
The Warren Commission report, I submit, was a communications
failure that need not have occurred. The report was prepared by
persons, unfortunately like myself, who distrusted and did not
know how to use any form of communications except the written
word. The visual media, television, and videotape, were barred
from courtrooms, which is lawyers forum, and had brought disre-
pute to congressional investigative committees. I might commend
this committee at this point for setting an example for this country
and in Congress as to how an extensive investigation can be con-
ducted in the full presence of all of the modern media that we now
have.
It is true, as we all know today, that the only effective way to
communicate with the American people, and all of us who are
elected public officials — I like to point out that Bob Blakey always
introduces me improperly as an appointed official, and I think the
Congressmen recognize the difference.
481
Any elected public official and others realize the importance of
the mass media in communicating to the American people.
All the Warren Commission's essential testimony should have
been preserved on videotape. The report itself should have been
packaged, both for video presentation to small audiences, and for
longer video study by amateur analysts and scholars. Incorporated
into the presentation should have been an opportunity for ques-
tioning by critics and a video presentation of the evidence that
related to the questions that were being posed by those critics.
The eighth failure that I would like to identify for the committee
is the failure to have a mechanism after the Warren Commission
closed its operation for evaluating new evidence. I think the
Warren Commission was shortsighted in writing its report and
closing the door on further investigation. This led to claims that
new evidence was being ignored or that the significance of old
evidence had been overlooked. The public concern about the assas-
sination of any President and of President Kennedy in this case
will not end in the lifetime of anyone in this room.
The dedication of a democratic society to an honest search for
the truth required an ongoing vehicle for unbiased public inquiry.
Such problems might have been minimized if the Attorney General
had established within the Justice Department an office which
would have continued to receive evidence and analyses from
anyone who desired to submit them.
A probable consequence would have been that further private
and public investigations would have been funneled into that office
rather than into the channels which they had predominately been
funneled toward. Instead, the public continued to be bombarded
with spurious claims that significant leads or new evidence had
been developed, when, in fact, the evidence was not new or the
leads were not fruitful.
Congress, as we all know, ultimately became the only national
forum in which continuing questions could be reexamined.
The last failure that I wish to identify was the failure of the
Warren Commission to have an adequate historical perspective on
its task. The Warren Commission partially recognized that its ac-
tivities did have a long time historical purpose and ultimately one
member of the Warren Commission staff was an historian and it
was the policy of the Commission to preserve all of its documents
for delivery to the archives. I am always interested in those who
accuse me of being part of a coverup when they ask me to explain
how there can be one document that I prepared that is in the
Archives which says one thing and another document that says
something slightly different, and I am always amazed that they do
not see the existence of both of those documents as a frank evi-
dence of our desire to be candid about how we changed our minds
and how things moved along and even the political considerations
that affected some of our work.
We are, those of us who are former staff members of the Warren
Commission, available to be dissected publicly because we made
those documents available in as total a fashion as they existed, to
my knowledge, and we will be examined, I am sure, as this commit-
tee will be in the future because of that attempt to be candid.
482
But the fundamental investigation itself, I think, lacked a proper
historical perspective. I think that could have been dealt with, in
part, by an investigatory approach which did collect basic raw
data, such as I identified a few minutes ago — extensive telephone
records, tapes, other things of that sort. Those materials would
have served as original data against which new witnesses, new
leads and accusations of investigative agency memos could later be
evaluated.
A second historical perspective would have been to attempt more
carefully to anticipate the conspiracy theories of the future critics
and to build its investigation in terms of suspect lists and theories.
Mr. Chairman, then let me come to the recommendations that I
would like to make for the Commission.
I would like to start by offering one basic conclusion for this
committee's consideration. And that is that political murder,
whether it be of an elected or a private person, requires an investi-
gatory treatment different from that of ordinary crime. The politi-
cal implications of such a murder do not vanish with the criminal
prosecution, and over a period of time, new political implications
may arise from the manner in which the original criminal investi-
gation and prosecution were handled, even if no new evidence is
generated that is persuasive enough to change the conclusions of
the original criminal investigation.
If a hint of conspiracy exists and possible conspirators are not
identified and prosecuted, the case will be retried and reexamined
in the public medium.
Ultimately, political pressures or new facts may force all or part
of the original investigation to be renewed again by a congressional
committee, such as yours, or by another commission, such as the
Rockefeller Commission. Any governmental investigation into a
political murder must, therefore, address both the short-range pur-
poses of its investigation as well as the long-range needs and pres-
sures.
Political murders, I might point out, can include the President of
the United States, a Governor, as with Huey Long, a Senator, as
with Robert Kennedy, a Congressman, or even a mayor or a local
official, a civil rights or other leader, a newspaper reporter, as
apparently has happened recently in Arizona. Because such a
murder threatened the stability of our Government and the politi-
cal freedoms of all Americans, it does require a special treatment.
The murder of a President, moreover, is a crime that requires
even more extensive and perhaps even a different investigation
than any other political murder. Surely, the reverberations of the
murder of the President are louder and longer and the implications
reach into questions of foreign policy which may not be touched by
any other kind of political murder.
Against those basic reflections, I would like to submit the follow-
ing recommendations to the committee for its actions.
First of all, and looking at the narrowest question that I wish to
address, is simply what do we do about the assassination of Presi-
dent Kennedy and the ongoing problem of its investigation?
I think in the narrowest sense, the select committee should
recommend that the John F. Kennedy Library or some other ap-
propriate institution be established as a repository for all materials
483
dealing with the assassination of President Kennedy and the
murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, including the political aftermath,
which I believe is an important consideration, the public reexamin-
ation of how the Warren Commission operated and the relationship
of all other investigatory agencies to that Commission.
All materials that relate to those events should be declassified
except those whose publication is inconsistent with human decency.
The repository should be federally funded so that it may collect all
relevant public and private materials and can become a center for
serious scholarly inquiry into the issues that have evolved from
those murders and which have brought so many people in practi-
cally full-time attendance to these committee hearings.
The second recommendation which I wish to make concerns com-
municating the select committee’s conclusions and I suspect I don’t
need to make this recommendation.
The select committee should seriously consider how it can use
visual as well as written means to communicate its own investiga-
tory processes and its own findings, even beyond the conclusion of
these hearings. The media form should not be designed, as I say,
simply for immediate observation by the general public but should
be available for repeat presentations to future audiences. You may
not like my suggestion in this regard, but I submit to you that you
will soon become the target that replaces the Warren Commission
as the object of attack for the various critics of the investigation
into President Kennedy’s assassination.
Third, what do we do about possible future evidence that may
bear upon the murders of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey
Oswald? I suggest to the committee that if criminal prosecution
remains possible for either of these murders under any applicable
statutes of limitations, the select committee should recommend
that the Attorney General of the United States establish a proce-
dure and designate an Assistant Attorney General who will be
responsible for the continued evaluation of evidence which may
establish a basis for prosecution and for pursuing any leads. While
this will undoubtedly have some consequences of encouraging spu-
rious conspiracy claims, it will, in my opinion, have the more
beneficial result of affirming the U.S. Government’s continuing
desire to ascertain the truth.
I might broaden that suggestion in a further regard and say that
it may well be as a result of the mandate of this committee to
investigate, both the assassination of Martin Luther King and
President Kennedy that an appropriate recommendation would be
that an office be established within the Justice Department which
would specialize in what I am identifying as political murder and
out of that established committee, it seems to me there should not
only be responsibility for investigating the loose ends which will
exist because under the pressure of time also this committee will
not complete its investigation for reasons that are political, but
that there needs to be a capability to move quickly in the event of
future assassinations. There needs to be a plan ready to be imple-
mented which a successor Vice President can adopt with some
sense that there has been reflection upon it and there needs to be
an ability to draw upon techniques and staff without having to
reinvent the wheel.
484
I would like to suggest some criteria that should be utilized in
deciding how to structure a future investigation of a political
murder. I think that it is important to identify the essential goals
of any such investigation, and I would like to enumerate them, as I
see them, for the benefit of this committee. The goals of any
investigation into the assassination of the President of the United
States should be, first of all, to ascertain the truth; second of all, to
preserve the integrity of the governmental agencies or decision-
makers against disruption by groups or individuals who would use
uncertainties surrounding the political murders in order to achieve
results that are not justified by the weight of evidence; third, to
protect the civil liberties of individuals and groups who may
become the objects of popular suspicion but against whom no viola-
tions of law can be proved in a judicial proceeding; fourth, to
communicate accurately, honestly, and effectively to the American
public the results of any investigation and the reasons for reaching
those results; fifth, to maintain responsibility for a continuing in-
vestigation in the hands of trusted, unbiased and competent per-
sons who have public accountability rather than leaving the field
to be occupied solely by private vigilante groups.
Next, to collect, preserve, and make available for historical pur-
poses all records related to the investigation of a political murder;
furthermore, to establish the investigative agencies' independence
from all existing branches of Government when the necessity re-
quires; next, to obtain the widest possible political and public un-
derstanding of any investigation, and, last, to protect the national
security.
In that final regard, I would like to suggest that an appropriate
and essential responsibility of this committee is to candidly assess
the factors that related to the CIA's withholding of information
that it had attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro. And I would like
to suggest that this committee must recommend how in the future
any information should be handled which is relevant to domestic
assassinations but whose disclosure might threaten the national
security or interfere with the conduct of foreign affairs by the
President.
I offer no insights as to how one does that. I merely pose it to the
committee as an important task which I believe it faces.
Mr. Chairman, you have been very patient and I appreciate the
opportunity to speak to you.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you, very much, Judge Griffin.
Our patience is due to the fact we know that you have taken a
great deal of time to come here and give this committee the benefit
of the kind of thinking that has gone into testimony that you have
given here today. I think your testimony has been outstanding in
the sense that you made the kind of evaluation that you have
made of the work of the Warren Commission, the work of this
committee and the kind of proposals that you have made to this
committee.
Let me pose this question to you. During the course of the
existence of this committee, from time to time we have heard
people say, well, what have you come up with in terms of asking
for a smoking gun to come out of our investigation.
485
At one time, one of the Members of Congress even said to us on
an occasion, well, when you finish, will your work have changed
the course of history? Then I recall on another occasion we were
asked about our work. Judge Preyer here made a comment early
on in our investigation, he said that we don’t know where our
investigation will come out. It may well be that we will come out at
the same place the Warren Commission did for different reasons.
And then, of course, there are those who say, well, why are you
spending all this money to come up with the same thing the
Warren Commission came up with? And as one who was a member
of the Warren Commission and one who is a highly respected
citizen and judge that you are, why don’t you just comment on that
area, in terms of whatever salutary effect you find from this inves-
tigation.
Judge Griffin. Mr. Stokes, you and I have known each other too
long, I think, for you to think I am simply buttering you up. What
I have to say is going to sound that way to everyone else.
I think this committee, by its conduct, regardless of what its
conclusions are, has demonstrated that it is possible to reexamine
or even to examine for the first time in a public forum matters
which can have frightening consequences to the American people. I
think that the conduct of this committee, as I have been able to
perceive it from the provinces, from the newspapers that I read
and the television that I have seen, has demonstrated that the
fears that the Warren Commission expressed that it would not be
possible to publicly examine those questions, and we were the
products of a period where I think it had been demonstrated that
things of that nature might not be able to be publicly examined
because irresponsible people who would conduct the investigation,
but I think your committee has done a tremendous service by
showing that this House of Representatives and public officials can
handle a sensitive matter like .this in a highly responsible fashion.
I think that in light of the tremendous distrust that this country
has come to have, not only about the events that surrounded the
assassination of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, but
about the integrity of our Government in general, the mere fact
that there has been an inquiry, that it has been conducted by a
staff which has been determined to prove that the conspiracy theo-
rists were right, that the Warren Commission was wrong, I think
reaffirms our faith in our Government’s honesty and the ability of
us to have an open society.
And I think you have also done a service to thousands of Ameri-
cans who have been deeply troubled by the investigations that have
previously been conducted, who have honestly, and often I disagree
with them, but I believe have honestly in the vast number of
instances, attempted on their own to examine the failures of the
Warren Commission. The existence of these people, many of whom
I believe are sitting behind me and have been behind other wit-
nesses for days, is strong evidence of how serious this concern has
been throughout the United States.
We have educated men and women, intelligent men and women,
who did not believe in the conclusions or the integrity of the
investigation and who arrived at those conclusions, not in a frivo-
lous fashion, but by incredible expenditures of effort and digestion
486
of materials, and I think the Government owed this investigation,
reinvestigation to those people who cared so strongly.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you very much. Judge.
Several of the members have indicated that they wanted the
time to be able to extensively examine you regarding policy mat-
ters and matters that relate to performance of the agencies, and
due to this other commitment that I have, which was made some
time ago in anticipation of the fact we were going to conclude
today about 4 o’clock, I would beg leave of you at this time to make
some concluding observations which I have promised those who
have been following these hearings that I would attempt to do on
the concluding day. With your permission, I will do that now.
Judge Griffin. I yield 3 minutes to the chairman.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you very much, Judge.
This afternoon, the Select Committee on Assassinations ends this
series of public hearings into fact and circumstances, the death of
President John F. Kennedy, The committee, in November, will
continue its public hearings into the assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr,, and policy hearings on the death of both Presi-
dent Kennedy and Dr. King may be held in December.
There is a possibility, too, that the investigation of the Kennedy
assassination will require 1 or more additional days of evidentiary
hearings, though no decision has been made as yet on that point.
As we have announced, the committee will meet in public in
December to reach its conclusion in the two investigations. At this
time, I would like to make some general observations attempting to
sum up this phase of the public work that ends today.
As I indicated when the committee convened on September 6,
1978, it had identified four main issues to investigate in order to
fulfill its legislative mandate which is found in House Resolution
222. First, who assassinated President Kennedy? Second, how well
did the agencies perform? Third, did the assassin or assassins have
help; that is, was there a conspiracy? Fourth, what recommenda-
tions shall the committee make for the future?
During the past 3 weeks, the committee’s hearings have moved
through several general phases, although the evidence it has con-
sidered in each phase, obviously bears on the resolution of all of
the issues.
First, evidence was received on the facts and circumstances sur-
rounding the President’s death and the connection, if any, between
those facts and circumstances and the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey
Oswald.
Second, an effort was made to evaluate the performance of the
various Federal agencies — the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, and
the Warren Commission.
Third, the committee examined certain conspiracy theories, some
not so serious, some that cannot be rejected out of hand.
Throughout, the committee has strived to consider the recom-
mendations it will make for the future. As I noted on September
25, 1978, in presenting its evidence, neither the committee nor its
staff has tried to prove or disprove any particular theory. The staff
has presented the evidence and the committee has made an effort
to evaluate it. The purpose of these hearings has been to consider
the evidence available on a particular point. That evidence may
487
prove or disprove this or that theory or be insufficient to make a
judgment either way.
Nevertheless, because these hearings are legislative in character
and not a judicial trial, the committee has had a duty to make
what it has learned public, even if the evidence falls short of what
everyone might wish to know on any one question. It may be
helpful to repeat what has been said here about the quality and
quantity of evidence available to the committee.
As it has moved through each of the phases of its deliberations,
in general, during the first phase of our hearings, the committee
had available to it the hard stuff of science, quality and quantity of
which was unusually high. As the committee turned to assessing
the performance of the agencies, less scientific evidence was availa-
ble, and it was necessary to rely more on documents and human
memories; chiefly, those of public officials.
Then as the committee’s attention turned to the question of
conspiracy, the hard evidence of science and documents became
even more rare. It was necessary to consider in its place oral
testimony and recorded conversations. And those who have fol-
lowed our hearings must recognize the difference in quality and
quantity of three types of evidence.
Human testimony is sharply qualified by human perception and
memory, to say nothing of bias, motive to lie, or fear of retaliation.
It is, therefore, less reliable than scientific analysis or documents
written, not for litigation, but as an accurate record of actual
events.
In this context particularly, we must, as I have said, always
distinguish between a suspected and a fact found.
Another point must be repeated for emphasis. These proceedings
have not been a criminal trial. There was no indictment, there was
no defendant, there was no prosecutor, there was no defense coun-
sel. The normal rules of evidence found in criminal proceedings
have not, therefore, been applicable here.
Because none of these elements played a role in our work, a
caveat has been imposed on the committee, as evidence has been
introduced before it, and should be imposed upon those who follow
our proceedings: the caveat it is not to take the evidence that we
have considered beyond what it fairly establishes or to sensationa-
lize it. This caution is especially apt on the conspiracy question.
When evidence of association has been considered, as I noted at the
beginning of this week, conspiracy is founded on association, but
more than association is required to establish conspiracy.
Reasoning that guilt goes hand in hand with association, the
principal of guilt by association is to be abhored in a free society.
Those who have followed our hearings or read our record must
evaluate the evidence as the committee, indeed, itself must evalu-
ate. There is an obligation to reserve judgment until all the evi-
dence is in and not to reach conclusions beyond what the evidence
fully justifies.
I must also caution you that even though our public hearings
have concluded in the Kennedy case, all of the evidence is not yet
in. Obviously, it has not been possible for us to consider here every
question of concern or even to consider old evidence on those
questions. Much was considered in our executive hearings, our
#
488
depositions, our field interviews and file reviews that will be ana-
lyzed and made public in our final report.
What has been presented in these public hearings has been the
distillation of over a year of effort by the committee, a staff of 40
attorneys, investigators and researchers. Nevertheless, I recognize
that there have been loose ends in our hearings. Most of them, we
hope, to be able to pin down or tie down in our final report. But
frankly, life itself contains loose ends. As I said, not every question
that can be asked can be answered. Not every question that can be
answered can be answered to the satisfaction of all.
Apart from publication of our final report and perhaps 1 and 2,
as yet, unscheduled days of hearings, this today brings the commit-
tee's public work on the assassination of President John F. Kenne-
dy to an end. It has been a fairly intensive 17 days of hearings. In
all, 59 witnesses appeared before us and well over 500 exhibits
were entered into the record. The committee has heard from wit-
nesses of all character — noted political figures and ordinary citi-
zens, a former President of the United States, a current president
of a foreign country and an individual who carried an umbrella on
one sunny day in Dallas.
The committee and the staff has spent untold man-hours of
sorting out a voluminous 15-year accumulation of information.
Cities like Miami, New Orleans, and of course, Dallas was visited
often. There were trips to foreign countries — Cuba, Mexico, France,
Spain. In all, there were 385 trips to 564 points for a total of over
1,870 days in the field, and the work continues and has continued
during the course of these very hearings that we have held in this
room.
Witness interviews, for instance, have totaled over 1,548. Seventy
five witnesses were questioned in executive session, 41 of whom
were immunized. Over 500 files from the CIA, the FBI, the Secret
Service, the Departments of State and Defense, as well as other
agencies, have been reviewed. Files that range from a few pages to
thousands. The FBI file on Lee Harvey Oswald alone consists of
238 volumes containing 5,754 serials.
Now, let me also point up some of the statistics related to some
of the scientific projects which were made a major part of these
hearings. First the contractors. The photo analysis enhancement,
470 man-days were consumed at a total cost to the committee of
$9,500. For acoustical analysis, for radio transmissions in Dallas on
November 22, 1963, 160 man-days at a cost of $72,000. For simulat-
ed gun tests in Dealey Plaza in conjunction with the acoustical
test, 38 man-days at a cost of $3,850.
The total, 668 man-days, $167,350.
As for consultants, for photoanalysis enhancement, 270 man-days
at a cost of $50,000. Pathology, 101 man-days at $29,000. Ballistics,
110 man-days at $12,000. Medical illustrations, 78 man-days at
$10,000. Handwriting analysis, 35 man-days at $6,000, Methodology,
20 man-days at $3,200. Polygraph analysis, 16 man-days at $2,500.
Dentistry examination, 8 man-days at $1,500. Neutron activation
analysis, 23 man-days at $1,500, Fingerprint analysis, 3 man-days
at $600. The totals, 828 man-days, $146,200.
As all can clearly see, these hearings, while illustrative of our
work, have reflected only part of that work. This then would con-
489
elude my comments on the work of the committee and our public
hearings. There are, however, a number of individuals and institu-
tions to whom I would like to say a personal word of gratitude on
behalf of this committee for their efforts in supporting us in the
conduct of these public hearings.
Mr. David Fones, the sound engineer who installed a new PA
system as the hearings began. Mr. Fones has worked long hours to
insure the system functioned properly, has been available to this
committee staff at all times. To the superintendent of the three
House press galleries for their work in accommodating the press.
Mike Michaelson and his assistant Tina Tate, Ben West, and his
assistant Charlie Marsten, David Holmes, to Maurice Johnson of
the Senate still photographers gallery. To Ed Poland of property
supplies service and to all of the staff of the superintendent's office.
To Capt. Charles Parks, Lt. William Waters and the Capitol
Police providing security for this hearing room 24 hours a day. To
Marshall Jerome Bullet, Inspector Reed and his staff for providing
extra security for Marina Oswald Porter and Jose Aleman. To the
Congressional Reference Service of the Library of Congress for
providing the committee with graphic illustrations of its exhibits.
To Bara Photographies, Inc., for providing us with photographic
enlargements. To the National Archives for providing the actual
pieces of evidence for the gentleman whom they sent over here on
every occasion that we ever requested.
To the Governments of Mexico and Cuba for their assistance in
those countries. To the police departments of Dallas and Miami for
the cooperation we received in those cities. And the Metropolitan
Police Department of Washington, D.C.
Finally, to my fellow members of this committee who have given
the Chair excellent cooperation in so many respects and to whom I
will be forever grateful for the kind of cooperation given me, to the
staff, the lawyers, the researchers, clerical staff, particular to Pro-
fessor Blakey, chief counsel of the staff and to the young people on
the staff who, in my opinion, have done an outstanding job.
A few days ago one of the scientists before this committee com-
mented as he left the hearing room, that if the caliber of young
people on this staff are any indication of the kind of young people
that are coming along in this country today, the country is in good
shape, and I would concur and echo his sentiments regarding the
brilliant young people who work for us.
I would like to thank, also, in particular, the secretaries, the men
who run the copying machines, the rest of the administrative staff
who worked long into the night to prepare the press packets and
briefing books for the members. Oftentimes we tend to overlook the
amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes in preparing these
kinds of hearings. I am sure that other members of the committee
are as grateful as I am for the support that all of those people have
given us.
Last, may I just say to the working press that has been here who
have been with us every moment during these hearings, the press
has been vigorous, I think, aggressive, probing, they have also been
cooperative in many respects and courteous to this committee, to
the Chair in many respects, and I want to acknowledge that.
490
All in all, I want to thank all persons who had anything to do
with the way in which we were able to present these hearings. It is
particularly important to me, and I think all members of this
committee, to have the American people understand the nature of
the undertaking this committee has undertaken, has; in our opin*
ion, from the very beginning been a very serious undertaking. We
were all determined these hearings would not be conducted in any
kind of a circus atmosphere, they would have all of the profession-
alism of the House of Representatives behind them, they would be
done professionally and competently. The Chair feels that has been
accomplished and I appreciate the cooperation that we have re-
ceived from everyone in being able to perform our work in that
manner.
Thank you, and at this time, I will ask Judge Preyer if he will
assume the Chair.
Mr. Preyer [now presiding]. Well, I hope the rest of the after-
noon won't be anticlimactic after the Chairman's statement.
Have a good trip, Mr. Chairman, you have earned it.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you.
Mr. Preyer. Judge Griffin, we appreciate your statement, your
deeply thoughtful statement. I think you went well beyond just
talking about the facts of the Warren Commission study and the
facts of this Commission's study and you have got into the question
of the meaning of it, and you have talked to us about the meaning
of criminal law and political murders and uses of history. It is
certainly a stimulating paper.
We have one historian, at least, who is a member of this panel,
and the Chair at this time would recognize Mr. Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and, judge, we welcome
you to the committee hearings today, and you have given us some
very thoughtful food for thought, recommendations, some of which
I suspect we won't be able to carry out but some we will.
I have two or three categories of things I would like to explore
with you, and I think rather than just ask for continuance of time
repeatedly, I would like to take one of those areas first and then
after others have had their chance to ask questions, perhaps I
could get additional time.
I want now to go directly to the policy questions and policy
recommendations that you make, which are large, I would like to
return to those, but in 5 minutes before the second set of bells ring,
I would like to explore some specific questions that come out of
your testimony.
First, on your preliminary draft, which I went over last night,
and repeated today, you indicated that certain things might have
been done differently had you known certain kinds of information.
Now, for your information, it seems to me as one member of this
committee that upon occasion and sometimes even frequently the
two agencies that we questioned most carefully, the CIA and the
FBI, frequently excused themselves for not giving information to
the Warren Commission by saying something like this — ''we gave
them whatever they asked for." But if the Warren Commission
didn't know of its existence, the question logically arises, how could
they ask for it.
491
And when we talked to the Warren Commission members, in-
cluding the President, the former President, and J. Lee Rankin, we
seemed to get that refrain, we couldn’t ask for something we didn’t
know existed. It reminds me ever so much of the chicken and egg
dilemma that we get into sometimes in life.
But assuming that at some future date some other commission,
some other group, some other time, might be faced with the same
kind of problem for a political assassination, could you make any
specific recommendations as to how we could break that at the
outset institutionally or structurally?
Judge Griffin. Well, you are talking specifically, I presume,
about the failure of the CIA to reveal that they had supported, as I
understand the evidence, actually initiated attempts to assassinate
Premier Castro?
Mr. Fithian. That is one example. There are other lesser lights
in the discussion.
Judge Griffin. Certainly I think that is the most troublesome
one.
I don’t know what your evidence is as to what the President
knew. I think that decision has to be made at the highest leveU and
I think that unless the President himself was kept ignorant, and I
believe that the Attorney General has to be considered in this case,
since he was the brother of the President, it strikes me that when
you have a situation that seems to indicate, and I think it is a
question that you must develop the facts on, that the decision may
have been made at that level to keep information from the Com-
mission. I don’t think there is anything we can do about it.
Mr. Fithian. You don’t think there is anything that the Commis-
sion could do about it?
Judge Griffin. No; as far as what we do about that situation in
the future, I think you are going to stumble onto that information.
Incidentally, I think, as I understand the evidence before this
Commission, Allen Dulles, I believe, was privy to that information
and did not convey it to the rest of the Commission members.
I would rather answer the question this way: I think it might be
legitimate to keep that information from a commission provided
within the governmental process there was an assurance that the
President knew that there was a complementary investigation
going on and that ultimately all of that information would be
preserved and come to light. I am troubled even by that kind of
suggestion.
Mr. Fithian. Yes.
Judge Griffin. But I recognize that if it had been known in 1964
that the CIA was attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro, I think
the possibilities were very great in that period that pressures
would have been brought in this country to begin a war against
Cuba which might have had implications that would have brought
this country into a thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Those are frightening consequences and I have frankly myself
wondered whether the reason Chief Justice Warren said to us that
our investigation had those implications, was that something that
had been communicated to him by the President in that regard.
But I think in the long run if that decision is made and if made
by a responsible official, that that is what is crucial, if it were
492
made by President Johnson, I think I could accept that decision
being made by President Johnson provided
Mr. Fithian. This is hypoethical?
Judge Griffin. Yes, sir; talking about the future, Mr. Future
President, I could accept that decision being made that something
was crucial in the national interest that it could not even be
revealed to a body such as ours, provided we could have substantial
certainty that ultimately the record of this would be disclosed, that
it would ultimately become available for examination, so that at a
later stage in history we could assess whether that was a sound
decision or not.
Mr. Fithian. Let me turn to another question related to that. In
retrospect, many of the shortcomings of the Warren Commission,
which you spoke of here today in your presentation seemed glar-
ingly obvious, yet no member of the Commission has been willing
or no one associated with the Commission, up to today, had been
willing to acknowledge the shortcomings, and we have had, for
example, as you know, former members of the Commission and the
Chief Counsel.
This in itself seems to me to sort of contribute to the specula-
tions over consipracy, coverup, all of those dark terms. Why do you
think that no one else who was directly associated with the Warren
Commission has really been willing to make what I would call a
candid critique of the successes and failures of the Commission?
Judge Griffin. Well, one, I think that there are other people
who were members of the staff who may genuinely and honestly
disagree with my criticism. Some of the issues which I raised were
actually raised and are apparent from the Commission documents
and decisions were made at that point that the approach that I
have suggested was an improper approach.
Frankly, many of the suggestions I have made, I made as a staff
member, either in writing or orally, and there were differences of
opinion, and I think that those other members, whom I respect
both from the standpoint of their intelligence and their integrity,
have honest differences of opinion on this.
I also think that we are all human and it is difficult, when we
feel strongly about something, it is difficult to change our position.
I guess in part what I am saying is that it is easier for me to do it
because I am not changing my position that much,
Mr. Fithian. Let me turn to one of your stated goals of the
Warren Commission. In your presentation you indicated that one
of the, I should say unstated goals, of the Warren Commission was
to conduct “an investigation in a manner as to protect the reputa-
tion and employment of individuals against whom did not exist
convincing evidence of criminal conduct.''
Not necessarily naming names, but could you give us examples
of how this goal was implemented in the work of the Commission?
Let me explain why I am asking the question, if I may.
When you omit from any official body of evidence a name or an
activity, even with the very best of intent that you are trying to
protect someone, you are legitimately trying to protect someone,
you always open yourself up to that bane of existence, I suppose,
and that is the advantage of 20-20 hindsight by someone who
493
would like to say, well, they shouldn’t have covered that we
should have known about it.
Judge Griffin. Let me say that I don’t think anything was
covered up with respect to any individual by the Commission of
which I am aware, and I would be very interested if this committee
has found any instance in which the Commission failed to preserve
any information about any individual which it had in its posses-
sion.
I think the way in which the Commission attempted to achieve
the objective of protecting the reputations and employment of
people was in the way that the information which they received
was handled.
One of the things that is so disturbing, I believe, to the critics of
the Warren Commission is that they can find in many of the
footnotes of the Warren Commission contradictory citations to con-
tradictory documents, and when the Commission itself draws a
conclusion that, for instance, there was no evidence, I think one of
the conclusions that is written into the report is something to the
effect that there was no evidence that Ruby was involved in any
conspiracy with organized crime figures, which you have gone into.
The fact of the matter is there is a great deal of evidence in the
Warren Commission footnotes and the documents that support
them which have been available for public investigation to show
that many of the names that have been recited publicly in these
hearings, many of those people were interviewed and much of the
information which this committee has been going over was then
available to the Commission, The Commission could have published
that in its report and said that so and so did such and such, Mr.
Trafficante, for example, I don’t know what we had on Trafficante,
I think very little, or Lewis Me Willie we had quite a bit, and we
could have published things about Lewis McWillie and Lewis
McWillie may not be involved in the kind of activities that I want
my children to go into, or myself, but I think even with Lewis
McWillie there is a question of whether the proper step is to
publicly discuss him.
Now, although I must say we did publicly discuss McWillie,
maybe there were instances of people who visited with Jack Ruby,
a gentleman from Chicago, who saw him the night before Oswald
was assassinated. We had a lot of questions about that relationship.
We came to the conclusion that in all probability one of the things
he was doing was cheating on his wife that evening. We decided
not to publish that information, although anybody could read the
investigatory materials and find that in there.
Those are the kinds of things I am talking about.
Mr. Fithian. You said on page 7 of your testimony, “Had the
information been known to the Commission of CIA activities
against Castro, the Commission’s activity would have been greatly
altered,” and you go on to elaborate, although pretty briefly, about
how that might be altered and
Judge Griffin. I don’t think, for example
Mr, Fithian. You project that it might have involved a rather
prolonged investigation, as conspiracy investigations are wont to
be.
35-379 0 - 79-32
494
Do you have any indication that your findings would have been
different
Judge Griffin. I think that our findings
Mr, Fithian. After 15 years?
Judge Griffin. I would make this observation. I think our find-
ings on Oswald's motive would have been different, and this is a
question that I don't hear discussed very often, but I happen to
believe it is a very important question, because I think if an
analysis of the evidence indicates that the greatest possibility is
that Oswald was motivated to do this because he was aware
through his so-called underground, or whatever you want to call
these sources, grassroots sources, that the CIA was involved in an
assassination to murder, in plot to murder President Kennedy,
then it becomes clear that the motive for the assassination was
supplied by this activity of the CIA, and that raises a very vital
question of public policy, and if that were to be the conclusion of
this committee, it would have implications that would go beyond
these particular events that you are studying.
So I think we would have had to pursue that. We frankly
ducked, I think, everybody who has read the report knows, we
ducked the question of motive. I do not think we could have ducked
the question of motive under those circumstances.
Mr. Fithian. Are you satisfied with regard to the question of
motive or the testimony that, the information that has come about
and been reiterated time and again, that Lee Harvey Oswald’s
most likely motive for pulling the trigger was because he was
mentally or psychologically bent in the direction of trying to
become somebody important?
Judge Griffin. Yes; I think that is a factor, but that does not
explain why he selected President Kennedy or why he did it when
he did. I mean, we know, I think many of us accepted this point,
that Oswald attempted to assassinate General Walker. What moti-
vated Oswald at that particular time to select Walker?
If Oswald in November of 1963, with all his personality problems,
with the sense of total inadequacy that was being given him by his
wife, was then in such a psychological state that he was prepared
to pull another General Walker, it might not have been President
Kennedy he might have gone after someone else and, therefore, it
becomes very important that something, that perhaps that the U.S.
Government did is what supplied the impetus to select President
Kennedy rather than some other person.
Mr. Fithian. I have one more minor matter, then I would like to
ask a policy recommendation question.
You use the word, very powerful words on page 12, of the conse-
quences, nonetheless, that the Commission was powerless to
combat, and you used the word ‘'deliberate deceit by an investiga-
tive agency."
Judge Griffin. Yes, sir.
Mr. Fithian. Can you give me any indication, is that your con-
clusion, it was deliberate deceit?
Judge Griffin. I think the CIA deliberately deceived the Warren
Commission, based on evidence that I have seen. I think the
answer that they have given that they didn't provide the informa-
tion because nobody asked them is the kind of statement I get from
495
criminal defendants time in and time out, presiding over ordinary
trials, and I think it is patent to me.
The FBI conducted, I think the Hosty incident, I am satisfied it
was deliberate and not accidental, although that we did find out
about. I am not familiar with what you have found out as far as
withholding of information by the FBI so I wouldn’t really com-
ment upon anything beyond what happened in the Hosty episode.
Mr. FiTHiAN. Finally, you make a very fervent plea for open
hearings, open investigations, procedures in public, et cetera.
Judge Griffin. At some point.
Mr. FiTHiAN. Given the emotions of the 1963 and 1964 period,
when you were working with the Warren Commission, is it not
probable that the Warren Commission really couldn’t have con-
ducted a public hearing at that time?
Judge Griffin. I think that merits very serious consideration. I
think, as I reflect upon my state of trauma and what I think was
the state of trauma of this country, even when the Commission
came out, the Commission’s report came out, it may be that with
an event of that magnitude at that time, so close to the events,
that a proper judgment is under those circumstances that there
cannot be any public hearings.
I would think, however, that if one focused on the question in an
intense way there would still be a way to structure public hearings
that could avoid the trauma and could preserve the ultimate visual
record for presentation at another time.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you. Judge.
I recognize the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. McKinney.
Mr. McKinney. Judge, let me assure you our subway is running
better and better everyday.
Judge Griffin. Thank you, Mr. McKinney.
Mr. McKinney. Good to see you.
We have discussed these points before and they will be in the
record. So, very briefly, I gather you are suggesting that this com-
mittee come forth with almost a body of Federal law that would set
up a certain line to follow in the case of any public assassination?
Judge Griffin. Mr. McKinney, I don’t know whether legislation
is needed in this area. I am inclined to believe that a recommenda-
tion from this committee that would be implemented administra-
tively by the executive branch might deal with a lot of the prob-
lems and might in fact be a preferred way to do it, because I do
think there has to be flexibility, and when you write a statute you
are frozen for a long time.
But I think, for example, the recommendation I made about
continuing this investigation in some way through the Justice De-
partment, even after this committee ceases to operate, is one that
could be implemented, and I think the further suggestion that a
responsibility of the Justice Department should be to create a game
plan which could be immediately implemented in the event of a
future assassination. I think that could be implemented and those
things could be done without legislation.
Mr. McKinney. I think one of the problems that we have had, in
retrospect, relates to the trauma of the times. It would seem to me
that we need to set up some sort of a pattern as to what must
happen in a sequence.
496
Judge Griffin. The only reason I answered the question that you
pose in the way that I did is that I don't feel any confidence in my
judgment about where you draw the line between legislation and
administrative action, but it may be that there are matters, as you
suggest, that require legislation, and it may be a form of legislation
which imposed an obligation under certain guidelines upon an
appropriate agency of government, which may be the Justice De-
partment. Maybe that is what needs to be done.
Mr. McKinney. Of course, in neither one of these cases did we
have a trial which is really the citizens chance to have the knowl-
edge and the facts presented before them. It is perfectly possible
and let’s hope it never happens again, if something like this were
to happen again, that there would be a trial, which would answer a
lot of these problems.
Do you think it could be a good idea for this committee to
suggest, through legislation that within any given period of time,
after a political assassination, that there be an open public hear-
ing, a year or two later, in which a commission would present all of
the evidence to the American people?
Judge Griffin. There might be substantial value in setting a
timet able, because it may be a way of dealing with the problem of
trauma that Mr. Fithian mentioned. If you always have to be
deciding when are you going to get to this, it may be more difficult
to deal with it, but if you say that there must be a public hearing
in 2 years, or whatever period of time is, it has a number of not
only psychological advantages but it perhaps insulates the investi-
gators from pressure to prematurely go public.
Mr. McKinney. Far enough from the time itself to avoid an
emotional witch hunt and close enough so people would be assured
tliat everything the government knew would be put in front of
them?
Judge Griffin. That is right.
Mr. McKinney, It has been a great pleasure having you here
again and I want to thank you for all the help you have given this
committee in both its executive session and the public session.
Judge Griffin. Thank you very much.
Mr. Fithian. We are just checking to see if Judge Preyer has
anything. I see he has some notes.
Let me ask one question while you are getting in here.
Do you feel the Warren Commission was under such pressure of
time that they couldn’t do as complete a job as you wanted them to
do?
Judge Griffin. I feel that the time problems were resolved. They
were agonizing questions. You put this to me in two ways. I think I
am answ^ering in one way, but I realize your question was, as much
as I wanted to do. I wanted to do things that others didn’t want to
do. So my answer would be I think that we prematurely closed out,
we may have — let me say maybe I would like to reflect on this
more. There is a possibility we may have prematurely closed out
the investigation from my standpoint.
I think, though, that in terms of the standards that were used,
which I tried to discuss at the beginning of my remarks, in terms
of the standards that were used in making a decision as to whether
or not, I think that in the minds of my colleagues, who had the
497
policymaking authority, that this was not closed out prematurely.
There were certainly, and the record is full of the evidence of the
struggle within the staff on this issue, but I think in every instance
where a staff member, after discussion, insisted that the investiga-
tion had to go forward, the opportunity was given to him to go
forward, and I for one, at the time that we concluded the investiga-
tion, was satisfied that under the standards that were being ap-
plied, I had gone as far as I could go.
So, when I answered the question in saying that I would have
gone further, it is because I would have undertaken a form of
investigation that was actually different from the kind that we
ultimately wound up taking. So, my kind of investigation would
have taken longer.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you.
I have no further questions of the witness.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you. Judge Griffin.
I see I have a number of deep philosophical questions here which
would probably best at this hour of the afternoon go unasked or at
least I can ask you in private.
We do thank you for your very fine statement and I think you
have made a real contribution.
I noticed when you set out the goals of the Warren Commission
in the first part of your paper, one of those goals had nothing to do
with how agencies had performed or how we should handle an
assassination, a political murder, as you call it, if one came up in
the future.
I think that is a goal this committee has in mind, that we want
to study how the agencies performed, and in the unlikely, we hope
unlikely, event of future assassinations, how it should be handled,
and you have given us some very good practical answers on that
subject.
Let me just ask you this one question and no other.
On the question of how a political murder should be handled in
the future, is there anything further that you want to add to what
you have already spelled out in your paper?
Judge Griffin. I think I have nothing further to say other than
to thank the committee for the opportunity to be here and to
address all of you.
Mr. Preyer. We are grateful to you.
The chairman has thanked many people for their contribution in
this public hearing. I would like to just very briefly name a few
people who have worked so hard, and I am referring to the staff.
You mentioned, Judge, the incredible expenditure of effort, I
think is the way you put it, on behalf of the staff, and I certainly
agree with you on that.
We have recognized Mr. Blakey, but let me just briefly name a
few other people who have done an outstanding job. Some have
become media personalities now, such as the umbrella girl, Cynthia
Cooper, but many have labored in obscurity, and I think at least
we should name them. I think the morale in the whole team has
been remarkable in view of the kind of hours they have worked.
Probably one definition of what morale is is when you are united
in a common effort, then each person is perhaps better than they
498
thought they could be, do more than they thought they were capa-
ble of. I think the staff has done that.
Mr. Blakey, of course, has been our chief counsel. Gary Cornwell
has been our deputy chief counsel. Charlie Mathews our special
counsel, who has been sitting here whispering in Mr. Stokes' and
my ear for this month.
Kenney Klein, who sits just below me here, has been our assist-
ant chief counsel and team I leader.
Cliff Fenton has been our chief investigator.
Jackie Hess, deputy chief researcher, who has done some work
on the exhibition board.
Jim McDonald, team II and III leader, senior staff counsel.
Lee Matthews, senior staff counsel and team IV leader.
The Kennedy investigation is divided into five teams.
Michael Goldsmith, who is a senior staff counsel and the team V
leader.
And Staff Counsel Surell Brady and Andy Purdy, Jonathan
Blackmer, Belford Lawson, Bob Genzman, secretaries, who hadn't
had the chance to appear here much, Ida Jane Ross, Jane Godfrey,
Ann Misita, Rebecca Rife, Connie Smith, and the press officer,
Dawne Miller, whose name we have all seen on many releases, and
Lance Svendsen, and Paul Golden, who Xeroxed the press release
material which you have been receiving regularly, and all the
researchers and investigators whom I wish I had time to name.
One person who I think has become a media person, along with
Cynthia, has been Elizabeth Berning, our clerk here, who has been
very faithful and very efficient in keeping some 500-odd exhibits
straight. We appreciate that very much.
So at this time, is there anything further from any member of
the committee?
If not, the committee will adjourn sine die.
[Whereupon, at 4:56 p.m., the committee was adjourned, sine die.]
INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1978
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on Assassinations,
Washingtoriy D.C.
The committee met, at 9:10 a.m., in the Caucus Room, room 345,
Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Louis Stokes (chairman of the
committee) presiding.
Present: ^presentatives Stokes, Devine, Preyer, Faun troy, Dodd,
Fithian, and Edgar.
Chairman Stokes. The committee will come to order.
The Chair at this time wishes to make some opening remarks.
Today, the Select Committee on Assassinations will hold 1 day of
public hearings into the assassination of President John F. Kenne-
dy. As those of you who followed our Kennedy hearings may recall,
I observed at their conclusion that there might be a need for 1 or
more additional day of public presentation of evidence. What I had
in mind was the prospect of more hearings for our acoustics proj-
ect, which is an analysis of an audio tape recorded at the scene of
the assassination. The results of the project were first presented in
a public hearing on September 11. Today we will hear an independ-
ent review of those results.
Since September, the committee has had the opportunity to con-
tract for a refinement of the acoustical data. The results of this
work have been fully presented to committee members by the staff
and expert consultants in executive session or in formal briefings
over the past 2 weeks. The committee has also given careful consid-
eration to the implications of the acoustics evidence in terms of all
aspects of the investigation of the Kennedy assassination. The com-
mittee is also now prepared to reach its final conclusions and to
make its final recommendations on all of the questions before it in
both the assassination of President Kennedy and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., which, indeed, it will do tonight after this public
session has adjourned. Nevertheless, because of the significance of
the new acoustics analysis, the committee thought it would be
appropriate to examine it and explore its implications in public
hearing before the formal vote by the committee.
I would now like to recognize Prof G. Robert Blakey, the com-
mittee's chief counsel and staff director.
NARRATION BY PROF. G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF COUNSEL
AND STAFF DIRECTOR
Mr. Blakey. Thank you, Mr, Chairman.
( 499 )
500
Testimony in 1964 before the President’s Commission to Investi-
gate the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, called the
Warren Commission after its chairman, the former Chief Justice of
the United States, Earl Warren, and before this committee over
the last 2 years, has established that crucial issues in the assassina-
tion of President Kennedy turn on questions about the shots. How
many were fired? Over what time span? From what direction?
Answers to these questions formed the basis for the Warren
Commission’s lone assassination finding. If three shots were fired
from the Texas School Book Depository in a time period long
enough for them to have been fired from one rifle, then the verdict
of the Warren Commission may well stand. But the work of the
Commission must be fundamentally reappraised, if the time span
between the shots was too short for them to have come from one
rifle, or if one or more of the shots came from different directions.
If either of these occurred, it must be frankly recognized that a
conspiracy to kill President Kennedy may have been afoot in
Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
The Warren Commission was persuaded that there were at least
two and most probably three shots fired in Dealey Plaza, each fired
from the Book Depository building. In arriving at this finding, the
Commission considered a variety of evidence, including medical
and ballistics data as well as testimony by witnesses as to what
they heard or saw. The Commission maintained that the time span
between the shots was either 4.8 to 5.6 seconds or 7.1 to 7.9 seconds.
The difference between the two sets of figures depended on which
of the three shots the Warren Commission felt was a miss. The
discovery of three spent cartridge cases on the sixth floor of the
Book Depository was considered “convincing” proof of only three
shots. The Commission also concluded that its extensive investiga-
tion “disclosed no credible evidence that any shots were fired from
anywhere else.”
The work of this committee on the number, timing and direction
of the shots has been based almost entirely on scientific evidence.
The committee has had available to it a motion picture record of
the assassination made by Abraham Zapruder, forensic medical
evidence and testimony, ballistics and neutron activation analysis,
a trajectory reconstruction and, most significantly, an analysis of a
recording of sound transmissions from a police motorcycle radio.
The hearing today, Mr. Chairman, will be concerned, for the
most part, with that scientific evidence and its implications. Partic-
ular attention will be paid to results of a new analysis of data
previously developed in the committee’s acoustics project. It was
conducted by independent consultants whose findings were recently
submitted to the committee.
But before turning to the acoustics analysis, it may be useful, by
way of introduction, to review some of the testimony of witnesses
that was available to the Warren Commission in 1964. For that
purpose, I request that JFK exhibit F-361 be entered into the
record and appropriately displayed.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record again and displayed appropriately at this time.
[The information follows:]
501
JFK Exhibit F-361
Mr. Blakey, Mr, Chairman, this is an aerial view of Dealey
Plaza, the scene of the assassination, I would direct the commit-
tee's attention to the route of the presidential motorcade along Elm
Street, the Texas School Book Depository to the rear of the Presi-
dent's limousine at the time of the shooting, and the grassy knoll, a
parklike area that was to the right front of the President's car.
As the Warren Commission itself candidly acknowledged, testi-
mony on the number of shots varied. While the consensus seemed
to be three, some witnesses heard only two, and others said they
heard four or as many as five or six.
The witnesses on the scene also gave varying accounts of the
time span of the shots. Most agreed that they were all fired within
a few seconds: The general estimate was five to six seconds. FBI
tests indicated that Oswald's rifle could not be aimed and fired in
less than 2.25 to 2.3 seconds. Consequently, for the Commission to
conclude that only one assassin was involved, there had to be at
least that time span between the shots.
As noted above, the Warren Commission had testimony that
shots came from directions other than the Depository Building. But
the Commission was persuaded that that testimony should not be
credited because of the ''difficulty of accurate perception" and since
the "physical and other evidence" apparently did not support it.
This general summary of the witness evidence is useful, but it does
not give a full picture of what the Commission faced, particularly
as it applies to resolving the issue of the direction of the shots.
Witness testimony may be summarized statistically. The commit-
tee has prepared an analysis of the statements of some 178 persons
in Dealey Plaza that were available to the Commission, Mr, Chair-
man, I would ask that JFK exhibit F-360 be inserted into the
record again and now be appropriately displayed.
502
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record again and displayed at this time.
[The information follows:]
TABLE 111
Number of Shots Reported
DON'T
2 2 or 3 3 4 KNOW TOTAL
TSBD
KNOLL
OTHER
DONT
KNOW
TOTAL 17 7 132 6 9 171 *
The first entry is the obtained data. The number
in parenthesis is the expected number of such
judgements if the source and number of shots
are independent judgements.
*7 other witnesses report 1, 4-5, 5, 6 or 8 shots.
JFK Exhibit F-360
Mr, Blakey. The committee’s analysis of this testimony shows
that out of a majority who could establish a direction, 49 of them —
or 27.5 percent-thought the shots had come from the Book Deposi-
tory; but 21 others — or 11.8 percent — believed that they had come
from the grassy knoll; 30 of them — 16.9 percent — thought they had
originated elsewhere; and 78 — or 43.8 percent — were unable to tell.
The actual statements of certain witnesses who felt the shots
may have come from somewhere in addition to the Depository may,
however, be more illuminating than statistics, especially in the
case of law enforcement personnel, whose training could be expect-
ed to improve the quality of their judgment.
A Dallas police officer, Bobby W. Hargis, was, for example, riding
a motorcycle to the left and slightly to the rear of the President’s
3
2
38
2
1
( 4 . 6 )
( 1 . 9 )
( 35 . 5 )
( 1 . 6 )
( 2 . 4 )
5
2
11
0
2
( 2 . 0 )
( 0 . 8 )
( 15 . 4 )
( 0 . 7 )
( 1 . 1 )
2
1
22
3
1
( 2 . 9 )
( 1 . 2 )
( 22 . 4 )
( 1 . 0 )
( 1 . 5 )
7
2
61
1
5
( 7 . 5 )
( 3 . 1 )
( 58 . 6 )
( 2 . 7 )
( 4 . 0 )
46
20
29
76
503
limousine. He was questioned by Samuel A. Stern, a Warren Com-
mission counsel. I request at this time, Mr. Chairman, that a copy
of the Warren Commission testimony of Dallas Patrolman Bobby
W. Hargis be entered into the record as JFK exhibit F-644.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it is so ordered.
[The information follows:]
504
JFK Exhibit F-644
TESTIMONY OF BOBBY W. HARGIS
The testimony of Bobby W. Hargis was taken at 3 :20 p.m., on April 8, 1964,
In the oflBce of the U.S. attorney, 301 Post OABce Building, Bryan and Hrvay
Streets, Dallas, Tex., by Mr. Samuel A. Stem, assistant counsel of the Presi-
dent’s Commission.
Mr. SXKB17. Will you stand, please.
Do you solemnly swear that the evidence you are about to give shall be the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. Haboib. I do. . ^ ^
Mr. St£Bjv. Would yon state for the record your name and residence addresg
Mr. Habois. Bobby W. Hargis, 1818 Adelaide, Dallas, Tex.
Mr. Stiirx^. What is your occupation? ^
Mr. Habois. Police officer.
Mr. Stbbn. How long have you been a member of the Dallas Police Deporb«
ment? * ■
Mr. Habois. Nine years and about 7 months.
Mr. Stebn. And you are now a member of the motorcycle
Mr. Habqis. Division.
Mr. Stebn. Division?
Mr. Haboib. Yes.
Mr. Steen. Were you a part of the motorcade on November 22d?
Mr. Habois. Yes ; I was.
Mr. Stebn. In what position?
Mr. Haboib. I was at the left-hand side of the Presidential Umouslne. .
Mr. Stebn. At what part of the President’s car?
Mr. Habois. Well
Mr. Stebn. Front, or rear?
Mr. Haboib. Oh. Hear.
Mr. Stebn. Biding next to Mrs. Kennedy?
Mr. Habois. Right.
Mr. Stebn. Will you describe what occurred or what you observed as the?
limousine tnrned into Mm Street?
Mr. Habois. Well, at the time that the limousine turned left on Mm Streets
I was staying pretty well right up with the car. Sometimes on Elm we couldat;:
get right up next to It on account of the crowd, but the crowd was thinning
out down here at the triple underpass, so, I was next to Mrs. Kennedy when I
beard the first shot, and at that time the President bent over, and Govertu^
Connally turned around. He was sitting directly in front of him, and a real
shocked and surprised expression on his face.
Mr. Stebn. On Governor Connally’s?
Mr. Habois. Yes; that is why I thought Governor Connally had been shot
first, but it looked like the President was bending over to hear what he had
to say, and I thought to myself then that Governor Connally, the Governor
had been hit, and then as the President raised back up like that (Indicating)
the shot that killed him hit him. I don't know whether It was the second or
the third shot. Everything happened so fast.
Mr. Stebn. But, you cannot now recall more than two shots?
Mr. Habois. That is all that I can recall remembering. Of course, Everything
was moving so fast at the time that there could have been 30 more shots that
I probably never would have noticed them.
Mr. Steen. Did something happen to you, personally in connection with the
shot you have Just described?
Mr, Habois. You mean about the blood hitting me?
Mr. SI553N. Yes.^
505
Mr. Habois. Yes ; when Pr'esident Kennedy straightened back np In the car
the bullet him in the bead^ the one that killed him and it seemed like his
head exploded, and I was splattered with blood and brain, and kind of a
bloody water.- It wasn’t really blood. And at that time the Presidential car
slowed down. I heard somebody say, “Get going,” or “get going,”-—
Mr. Stebn. Someone inside
Mr. Habois. I don’t know whether it was the Secret Service car, and I remeco-
bered seeing Officer Chaney, Chaney put his motor in first gear and accelerated
up to the front to tell them to get everything out of the way, that he was coniing
through, and that is when the Presidential limousine shot oflE, and I stopped
and got off my motorcycle and ran to the right-hand side of the street, behind
the light iK>le.
Mr. SrEBN. Just a minute. Do you recall your impression at the time regard-
ing the source of the shots?
Mr. Habois. Well, at the time it sounded like the shots were right n ext to me.
There wasn’t any way in the world I could tell where they were coming from*
but at the time there was something in mv head that s aid that they prob ably
conld have been coming from the railroad overpass, b^au^ I thought ^nce
I had got splattered, with blood — I was just a little back and left of — ^just a
little bit back and left of Mrs. Kennedy, but I didn’t know. I had a feeling
that it might have been from the Texas Book Depository, and these two places
was the primary place that could have been shot from.
Mr, Steen. You were clear that the sounds were sounds of shots?
Mr. Habois. Yes, sir; I knew they were shots.
Mr. Stekn. All right, what did you do then? You say you parked your motors
cycle?
Mr. Habois. Yes, uhrhuh
Mr. Stebn. Where?
Mr. Habois. It was to the left-hand side of the street from — south side of Elm
Street
Mr. Stern. And then what did you do?
Mr. Hargis. I ran across the street looking over towards the railroad over-
pass and I remembered seeing people scattering and running and then I
looked
Mr. Stebn. People on the overpass?
Mr. Habois. Yes ; people that were there to see the President I guess. They
were taking pictures and things. It was kind of a confused crowd. I don’t
know whether they were trying to hide or see what was happening or what —
and then I looked over to the Texas School Book Depository Building, and no
one that was standing at the base of the building was— seemed to be looking up
at the building or anything like they knew where the shots were coining
from, so
Mr. Stern. How about the people on the incline on the north side of Elm
Street? Do you recall their behavior?
Mr. Habois. Yes; I remember a man bolding a child. Fell to the ground and
covered his child with his body, and people running everywhere, trying to
get out of there, I guess, and they were about as confused as to where the
shots were coming from as everyone else was.
Mr. Stebn. And did you run up the incline on your side of Elm Street?
Mr. Habois. Yes, sir ; I ran to the light post, and I ran up to this kind of a
little wall, brick wall up there to see if I could get a better look on the bridge,
and, of course, I was looking all around that place by that time. I knew it
couldn’t have come from the county courthouse because that place was swarm-
ing with deputy sheriffs over there.
Mr. Stern. Did you get behind the picket fence that runs from the overpass
to the concrete wall?
Mr. Haboi& Na
Mr. Stern. On the north side of Elm Street?
Mr. Hargis. Xo, no ; I don’t remember any picket fence.
506
Mr. Stern. Did you obserre anything then on the overpass, or on the In-
cline, or around the Depository? Anything out of the ordinary besides people
running?
Mr. Hargis. Xo ; I didn’t. That is what got me.
Mr. Stern. So, at that point you were still uncertain as to the direction of
the shots?
Mr. Hargis. Yes, uh-huh.
Mr. Stern. Then, what did you do?
Mr. Hargis. Well, then, I thought since I had looked over at the Texas
Book Depository and some people looking out of the windows up there, didn’t
like they knew what was going on, but none of them, were looking towards,
or near anywhere the shots had been fired from. At the time I didn’t know,
but about the only activity I could see was on the bridge, on the railroad
bridge so—
Mr. Stern. What sort of activity was that?
Mr. Hargis. Well, the people that were up there were just trying to get a
better lo<^ at what was haid;»ening and was In a base and running, or In a con-
fused fashion, and I thought ncrnybe some ct them bad seen who did the shootp
ing and the rifle.
Mr. 6n^. Then what did you do?
Mr. Hargis. Then I got back on my motorcycle, which was stni running,
and rode underneath the first underpass to look on the opposite side In order
to see if I could see anyone running away from the scene, and since I didn’t
see anyone coming from that direction I rode under the second underpass,
which is Stemmous Expressway and went up ai\)and to see if I could see
anyone coming from across Stemmons and back that way, and I couldn’t
see anything that was of a suspicious nature, so, I came back to the Texas
School Book Depository. At that time It seemed like the activity was cen-
tered around the Texas School Book Depository, so, that is when I heard
someone say, one ot the sergeants or lieutenants, I don’t know, “Don’t let any-
one out of the Texas School Book Depository,” and so, I went to a gap that
had not been filled, which was at the southwest corner.
Mr. Stern. And you remained there until you were relieved?
Mr. Habgi& Yes.
Mr, Stern, Anything else that you haven’t told us that you think is relevant
to our inquiry?
Mr. Hargis. No;' I don’t believe so. •
Mr. Stern. Thank you very much, Mr. Hargis.
The reporter will transcribe your testimony and have it available for yon
to read and sign If you care to. Otherwise, you may waive your right to
review and sign the testimony and she will mall it direct to the Commission,
whichever you prefer. It is entirely your option.
Mr. Hargis. Well ; it really doesn’t make any difference. It is more or
less what you all think is best.
Mr. Stern. It’s entirely up to you.
Mr. Hargis. Well, how long will it be until she fixes It up?
Mr. Stern. Well, off the record.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. Stern. On the record.
Mr. Hargis. All right Well, just go ahead and I will just let you go ahead
and send it in without the signature.
Mr. Stern. Thank you very much, Mr. Hargis.
507
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Stern asked Officer Hargis to describe what
occurred. Mr. Hargis said:
I was next to Mrs. Kennedy when I heard the first shot, and at that time the
President bent over, and Governor Connally turned around.
Mr. Hargis was then asked if anything unusual had happened to
him during the shooting. He replied:
Yes; when President Kennedy straightened back up in the car the bullet (hit) him
in the head, the one that killed him and it seemed like his head exploded, and I was
splattered with blood and brain.
In describing this scene, Mr. Hargis was interrupted by Mr.
Stern, who asked about the direction of the shots. Mr. Hargis
replied:
Well, at the time it sounded like the shots were right next to me. There wasn’t
any way in the world I could tell where they were coming from, but at the time
there was something in my head that said that they probably could have been
coming from the railroad overpass, because I thought since I had got splattered * * *
I had a feeling that it might have been from the Texas Book Depository, and these
two places was (sic) the primary place that could have been shot from.
After the shooting, Mr. Hargis stated that he saw a man holding
a child fall to the ground at the base of the incline and cover his
child. He also saw other people running. I request at this time, Mr.
Chairman, that JFK exhibit F-661 be entered into the record and
appropriately displayed.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record at this point.
[The information follows:]
508
Mr. Blakey. It is a photograph apparently of what Mr. Hargis
saw, Mr. Hargis himself stopped his motorcycle and ran up the
incline.
The man Officer Hargis saw lying on the ground was probably
William Eugene Newman. I would, at this time, Mr, Chairman,
request that a copy of Mr. Newman’s statement to the Dallas
County Sheriffs Department be entered into the record as JFK
exhibit F-645,
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record at this point.
[The information follows:]
SnBQflP7*8 D£X?iU3irSSa2Vir
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foU dotoi oa tha orooo oo it ooa«d that no ooro la 4|xoet poth of firo.
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fordoa*
CommnoH BnmirNo. 2003-CoQtiitiMd
JFK Exhibit F-645
509
The Newmans were observing the motorcade from the curb near
the west end of the concrete standard on Elm Street. Mr. Newman
gave this description of their actions after hearing the shots:
Then we fell down on the grass as it seemed that we were in direct path of fire
• • * I thought the shot had come from the garden directly behind me, that was on
an elevation from where I was as I was right on the curb. I do not recall looking
toward the Texas School Book Depository. I looked back in the vicinity of the
garden,
Abraham Zapruder was standing with his 8 millimeter motion
picture camera on a concrete abutment on the grassy knoll, just
beyond the Stemmons Freeway sign. Here I would request that
JFK exhibit F-155 be entered into the record again and appropri-
ately displayed.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record again at this point.
[The information follows:]
JFK Exhibit F-155
Mr. Blakey. It shows Mr. Zapruder as he is taking his motion
picture. I would also ask at this time, Mr. Chairman, that a copy of
Mr. Zapruder’s Warren Commission deposition be entered into the
record as JFK exhibit F-646.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[The information follows:]
35-319 0 - 79-33
510
JFK Exhibit F-646
TESTIMONY OF ABRAHAM ZAPRUDER
The testimony of Abraham Zapruder was taken at 1 p.m., on July 22, 1964, in
the office of the U.S. attorney, 301 Post Office Building, Bryan and Erray Streets,
Dallas, Tex., by Mr. Wesley J. Liebeler, assistant counsel of the Presidenfs
Commission.
Mr. Luibeleb. Mr. Zapruder, would you stand and take the oath, jrfease?
Do you solemnly swear this testimony you are about to give will be the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. Zapbtjdee. I do.
Mr. Liebeleb. My name is Wesley J. Liebeler.
Mr. Zapruder. What is your name?
Mr. Liebexee. Wesley J. Liebeler [spelling] L-i-e-b^l-e-r. I am an attorney
on the staff of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President
Kennedy. I have been authorized to take your testimony by the Commission
pursuant to authority granted to the Commission by Executive Order 11130
dated November 29, 1963, and the Joint resolution of Congress. No, 137.
Under the rules of the Commission you are entitled to have your attorney
present, should you desire to have him here. You are entitled to 3 days’ notice
of the hearing and you need not answer any questions you think would violate
any rights or privileges that you may have. Did you receive the 3 days* notice
of the hearing?
Mr. Zapbudeb. I was out of town — I was in New York and my secretary
called — she called me and told me that she made an appointment for me and
that’s about all that I know, Mr. Liebeler. The other proceedings — don’t
know.
Mr. Liebeler. I assume that you are willing to go ahead with your testimony
today since you are here.
Mr. Zapruder. Yes, I am.
511
Mr. Liebeleb. Would you state your full name for the record, pleaae?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Abraham Zapruder.
Mr. Liebeleb. That’s spelled [si)elllng] Z-a-p-r-u-d-e-r? Is that correct?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. TiiKBELEB. What is your address?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Home address?
Mr. T^tkbetjer. Yes.
Mr. Zapbudeb. 3909 Marquette.
Mr. T.rKHTTTJCB- Here In Dallas?
Mr. Zapbudeb. In Dallas — yea
Mr. Liebeleb. Are you in business here In Dallas, Mr. Zapruder?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. What business are you in?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Manufacturing ladles dresses.
Mr. T .Tgwgr.ien^ The manufacture of ladles dresses?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. T^ngwirrjnt. I understand that you took some motion pictures at the time
of the assassinaticm?
Mr. Zapbudis. That's ccHrect
Mr. T iTTCBiTT jgB- Could you tell us about the circumstances under which you did
that, where you were at the time and what hapi>ened?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. And what you saw.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Well, of course, what I saw you have on film, but that was
the day, November 22, it was around 11 :30. In fact, I didn’t have my carnwra
but my secretary asked me why I don’t have It and I told her I wouldn’t have
a chance even to see the Presld^t and somehow she urged me and I wmt home
and got my camera and came back and first I thought I might take pictures
from the window because my building Is right next to the building where the
alleged assassin was, and it’s just across — 501 Elm Street, but I figured — I may
go down and get better pictures, and I walked down, I believe It was Elm
Street and on down to the lower part, closer to the underpass and I was trying
to pick a space from where to take those pictures and I tried one i^ce and It
was on a narrow ledge and I couldn’t balance myself very much. I tried another
place and that had some obstruction of signs or whatev« It was there and
finally I found a place farther down near the underpass that was a square ot
concrete — I don’t know what you call it — maybe about 4 feet high.
Mr. I show you a picture that has been marked Hudstm Exhibit No^
1 and ask you if you can in fact see yourself in that picture?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Let me see--there it is here. That’s me standing th«e— there’s
a girl — ^that’s where I was standing.
Mr. T.TTOKi ini Tou are pointing out a concrete abutment that comes up im-
mediately to the right of the sign that reads “Stemmons Freeway, Keep Right”?
Mr. Zapbudeb. That’s right That’s the girl behind me— that’s my giil that
works in my office. She was up there, too.
Mr. T.rewiCT.gR- So, you and tbia girl are shown standing on top of this concrete
abutment there?
Mr. ZAPBUDB 3 EL That’S right — she was right behind me and that’s from where I
took the pictures.
Mr. Liebeleb. Then, you can actually see yourself In this picture, can’t you?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Well, I can’t distinguish myself being — I know I was there.
Mr. Liebexeb. Do you recognize that this picture was taken at the time yon
were there?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; I was there and I would say this couldn’t be anybody ^se^
unless— Tf this is an authentic photograph and it isn’t composed now or
changed — I would say that’s me. That's the first time I have seen that:
Were these pictures ever published in a magazine— there were pictures like
that I suppose — actually?
Mr. Liebeleb. This picture here is in fact one of a series of pictures that Is
bedng sold down here in Dallas by a fellow named Willis, I believe bis name Is
Phii Willis. He has a series of slides that are available and it’s picture No. 6
of those slides in which you can see yourself back there.
512
Mr. Zaprtjdeb. That must be It because there’s another .couple back there — I
took some from there and I was shooting some of the pictures to start my roll
from the beginning. I didn’t want to have a blank and I shot some, in fact,
they have it — the Federai Bureau of Investigation have those pictures^
Mr. Liebexeb. As you stood there on this abutment with your camera, the
motorcade came down Houston Street and turned ieft on Eim Street, did it not?
Mr. Zapbitdes. That’s right.
Mr. Liebelee. And it proceeded then down Eim Street toward the triple
underpass ; is that correct?
Mr. ZAPBTJDEaL That’s correct I started shooting — when the motorcade started
coming in, I believe I started and wanted to get it coming In frozn Houston
Street.
Mr. Liebkt.eb. Tell us what happened as you took these pictures.
Mr. Zapbtjdeb. Well, as the car came In line almost — I believe It was almost In
line — I was standing np here and I was shooting through a telephoto lens,
which is a zoom lens and as it reached about — I imagine it was around here—
I heard the first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like
this (holding his left chest area).
Mr. Ltebkleb. Grab himself on the frcmt of his chest?
Mr. Zafsttueb. Right— something like that In other words, he was sitting like
this and waving and then after the shot he just went like that
Mr. Liebeler. He was sitting upright in the car and you heard the shot and
you saw the President slump over?
'Mr. Zapbudeb. Leaning — leaning toward the side of Jacqueline. For a moment
I thought it was, you know, like you say, “Oh, he got me,” when you bear a
shot — you’ve heard these expressions and then I saw — I don’t believe the Presi-
dent is going to make Jokes like this, but before I had a chance to organize my
mind, I heard a second shot and then I saw his head opened up and the blood
and everything came out and I started — I can hardly talk about it Tthe witness
crying].
Mr. Liebeleb. That’s all right, Mr. Zapruder, wonld you like a drink of water?
Why don’t yon step out and have a drink of water?
Mr. ZapbtjT>eb. I’m sorry — I’m ashamed of myself really, but I couldn’t help it.
Mr. Liebeleb, Nobody should ever be ashamed of feeling that way, Mr. Za-
pruder. I feel the same way myself. It was a terrible thing.
Let me go back now for Just a moment and ask yon how many shots you
heard altogether,
Mr. Zapbudeb. I thought I heard two, it could be three, because to my esti-
mation I thought he was hit on the second — I really don’t know. The whole
thing that has been transpiring — it was very upsetting and as you see — I got a
little better all the time and this came up again and it to me looked like the
second shot, but I don’t know, I never even heard a third shot.
'Mr. Liebeleb. You didn’t hear any shot after you saw him hit?
Mr. ZAFBtmER. I heard the second — after the first shot — I saw him leaning
over and after the second shot — it’s possible after what I saw, you know, then I
started yelling, “They killed him, they killed him,” and I Just felt that
body had ganged up on him and I was still shooting the pictures until he got
under the underpass— I don’t even know how I did it. And then, I didn’t even
remember how I got down from that abutment there, but there I was, I guess,
and I was walking toward — back toward my office and screaming, “They killed
him, they killed him,” and the people that I met on the way didn’t even know
what happened and they kept yelling, “What happened, what happened, what
happened?” It seemed that they had heard a shot but they didn’t know exactly
what had happened as the car sped away, and I kept on Just yelling, “They
killed him, they killed him, they killed him,” and finally got to my office and my
secretary — I told her to call the police or the Secret Service — ^I don’t know what
she was doing, and that’s about all. I was very much upset. Naturally, I
couldn’t imagine such a thing being done. I just went to my desk and stopped
there until the police came and then we were required to get a place to develop
the films. I knew I had something, I figured it might be of some help — I didn’t
know what
As to what happened — I remember the police were running behind me. There
513
were police running right behind me. Of course, they didn’t realize yet, I
guess, where the shot came from — that it came from that height
Mr. Liebeleb. As you were standing on this abutment facing Elm street, you
say the police ran over behind the concrete structure behind you and down the
railroad track behind that, is that right?
Mr. Zapbuder. After the shots?
Mr. Liebeler. Yes.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yea — after the shots — yes, some of them were motorcycle cope^
I guess they left their motorcycles running and they were running right behind
me, of course, in the line of the shooting. I guess they thought it came from
right behind me.
Mr. TJEBFJ.KB. Did you have any impression as to the direction from which
these shots came?
Mr. Zapbuueb. No, I also thought it came from back of me. Of course, you
can’t tell when something is in line — it conid come from anywhere^ but being
I was here and he was hit on this line and he was hit right in the head — saw
it right around here, so it looked like it came from here and it could come from
there.
Mr. Liebeleb. All right, as you stood here on the abutment and looked down
into Elm Street, you saw the President hit on the right side of the head and you
thought perhaps the shots had come from behind you ?
Mr. ISapbudeb. Well, yes.
Mr. Likbeucb. From the direction behind you?
Mr. Zapbuueb. Yes, actually — I couldn’t say what I thou^^t at the moment,
where they came from — after the impact of the tragedy was really what I saw
and I started and I said — ^yelling, “They’ve killed him” — assumed that th^
came from there, because as the police started running back of me, it looked like
it came from the back of me.
Mr. Lieselebl But you didn’t form any opinion at that time as to what direc-
tion the shots did come from actually?
Mr. Zapbums. No.
Mr. Liebeleb. And you Indicated that they could have come also from behind
or from any other direction except perhaps from the left, because they could
have been from behind or even from the front
Mr. Zapbuueb. Well, it could have been — In other words If you have a point —
you could hit a point from any place, as far as that’s concerned. I have no way
of determining what direction the bullet was going.
Mr. LTrBF.T,KB. Did you form any opinion about the direction from which the
shots came by the sound, or were you just upset by the thing you ha(l seen?
Mr. 2iApBUT)EB. No, there was too much reverberation. There was an echo
whfch gave me a sound all over. In other words that square Is kind ot — ^it had
a soimd all over,
Mr. Liebeleb. And with the buildings around there, too?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes, the reverberation was such that a sound — as it would
vibrate — ^It didn’t vibrate so much but as to whether it was a backfire — In other
words, I didn’t from the first sound, from him leaning over — I couldn’t think
it was a shot, but of course, the second — I think it was the second shot I don’t
know whether they proved anything — they claim he was hit — that the first
bullet went through him and hit Connally or something like that— I don’t know
how that is.
Mr. Liebet.eb. Well, there are many different theories about that One thing
I would like you to do now — we have a series — a little bo<* here that is Commis-
sion Exhibit No. 885 and It consists of a number of frames from motion pictures
and I want to show you certain numbers of them which are imp<^tant to our
work and ask you if those look like they were taken from your film and if in
fact you could recognize it as you look through this book that these are individual
frame-by-frame pictures of the pictures that you took.
Mr, Zapbitdeb. Yes, they .are frame by frame and they weren't v«y clear, for
the simple reason that on the telephoto lens it’s good to take stIUs— when you
move — did you ever have binoculars and every time you move everything la
exaggerated in the move — that’s one reason why they are kind of blurred — the
movement. Now, you want me to identify whether these are my pictures?
514
Mr. Liebeler. Yes, specifically, I first call your attention to No. 185. This is
No. 185 on the back of it and will you look at the whole book and identify it
if you can and tell us that those are the pictures that — that those appear to
be the pictures or copies of the pictures that you took from your motion picture
camera ?
Mr. Zap&uder. Well, I would say this, they look like — If they were taken from
the film I had — these are the ones. I mean, I don’t know how to express myself.
Mr. Lixbeleb. Well, they were.
Mr. Zapbudcr. Well, it looks like them — that’s when they turned in from Elm
Street Is that it? I’m trying to visualize it. This is taking it ft'om the
opposite side of me, is it, where I would have been taking it, because I see this
structure — I have been around there and — or these — this couldn’t be here —
where did they get this in there — how did they get this in there, if I was taking
the pictures where did they get this in there? That shouldn’t be there;.
Mr. InEBELER. This is the thing back up behind on Dealy Plaza, I think, isn’t
it?
Mr. Zapbttdeb. They have one there, too?
Mr. Liebbleb. Yes, I think there is. Now, if you will look at Hudson Exhibit
No. 1, you will see that there is some kind of concrete structure there and is
a different kind from that figure. It has bigger holes in it
Mr. Zafrudeb. That’s right — in the back of this here, that's where it is —
that’s what I thought it was — that’s where I got mixed up.
Mr. Liebeleb. You thought that the concrete latticework on the individual
pictures in Commission Exhibit No. 885
Mr. Zapbudeb. Now I see it — that’s where they have moved now the flowers
and all that
Mr. Liebeleb. Yes — I have to state this for the record — so they can under-
stand what we are talking about — ^you confused it with the concrete lattice-
work shown in the background in the individual photographs in Commission
Exhibit No. 885, with the larger and obviously different concrete structure in
the background of Hudson Exhibit No. 1?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes, that — there is Elm Street there— this is a comer.
Mr. Liebeleb. Now, specifically here — let me show you the ones that have
been numbered 185 and 186 and see if you can recognize those. This is 185 here
that we are looking at now— of Commission Exhibit No. 885.
Mr. Zapbudeb, Yes. This is where he came in from Houston Street and turned
there.
Mr. LiEBETjnt. Yes ; and they are going down Elm Street now?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; this is before— this shouldn’t be there — the shot wasn’t
fired, was it? You can’t tell from here?
Mr. Liebeleb (no response).
Mr. Zapbudeb. I believe it was closer down here where it hapi>aied. Of
course, on the film they could see better but you take an 8 millimeter and you
enlarge it in color or In black and white, you lose a lot of detail. I wish I had
an enlarger here for you.
Mr. Liebeleb. In any event, frame No. 185 does look like it’s one of the frames,
sir?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. And 186 is similar also?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. Now, I’ve got a list of them here that I want to ask yon about —
picture 207 and turn on over to this picture. It appears that a sign starts
to come in the picture — there was a sign in the picture.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; there were signs there also and trees and somehow —
told them I was going to get the whole view and I must have.
Mr. Liebeleb. But the sign was in the way ?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes; but I must have neglected one part — I know what has
happened — I think this was after that happened — something had happened.
Mr. Liebeleb. Do you remember when you looked at your pictures yourself,
do you remember that there was a sign that does appear between the camera
and the motorcade itself and you can see the motorcade for a while and the
sign comes in the view?
515
Mr. ZAPBtjDEB. That’s right.
Mr. Liebelkb. And the motorcade comes behind it. Now, what about picture
No«. 210 — however — there is no No. 210 in here.
Mr. Zapbudeb. No.
Mr. Liebeleb. How about No. 222? Now, in No. 222 you can see the Presi-
dent’s car coming out from behind the sign.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. And you can see Governor Connally right there in that center
seat, I believe?
Mr. ZAPBtTDEB. Tea; Governor Connally — yes — these are all the same pic-
tures— I remember the car was kind of buried and I was kind of low and I don’t
know how I got that view — I didn’t get just the full view of the shot.
Mr. Liebeleb. Let’s turn to 225 and there the car is coming further out from
behind the sign.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeles. Is that still the same part of the sequence?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. You can now see the President for the first time.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; that’s the President.
Mr. Liebeleb. The President appears to have his hand up by his throat as he
is Just coming from behind the sign.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes; it looks like he was hit — it seems — there — somewhere
behind the sign. You see, he is still sitting upright.
Mr. TjTebeleb. Yes ; he’s sitting up and holding his hand np.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Do we have the sequence — the next frames?
Mr. Liebeleb. Yes ; it will be No. 227 and his hand comes up even more and
he starts to move a little to his left.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Apparently. And they started speeding the car then to— but
he is still sitting “up here. Is that still the President here?
Mr. Liebeleb. Yes; in picture No. 228 — ^he still appears to have his hand up
and in No. 229 it’s even more pronounced.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. As the car keeps coming up from behind and in picture 230 he has
raised both hands up.
Mr. Zapbudeb. It looks to me like he went like this— did he go to his throat —
I don’t remember — I thought he went like this [holding both hands on the left
side of his chest]. Did it show?
Mr. Liebeleb. Let’s turn over to picture 231 here — these still appear to be the
same sequence of pictures, do they not?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; you get about 16 per second and I think my camera was
moving a little fast, maybe 18 frames per second You see, we have a lot of
pictures on there.
Mr. Liebeleb. And 235 is there.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; we’ve got that.
Mr. Liebeleb. In 235 both hands are up by his throat there or up to the top
of his chest and Mrs. Kennedy is looking at him.
Mr. Zapbudeb. To me it looks like it.
Mr. Liebeleb. You mean it looks to yoKi as though he moved a little more
sharply perhaps?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Toward her— there are so many frames, of course, this is
probably his first reaction, but he leaned over — it would be after the shot was
fired, after I heard a sound, he went like this [leaning to the left and holding
both hands to the left side of his chest].
Mr. Liebeleb. He moved over to his left and pulled his hands there?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; he moved to the left and pulled his hands somewhat in
this direction.
Mr. Liebeleb. Does picture 235 appear to be one of the pictures that was taken
from your sequence?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. How about 240 — let’s turn over to 240 and there he has turned
his head toward the left a little bit more.
Mr. Zapbudeb. There’s only about 100 frames — they are so close.
516
Mr. TiTF.BKTJRR. Flve frames?
Mr. ZApBXTDEa. Five frames is nothing — I believe.
Mr. liiEBEXSB. How about 249?
Mr. ZApBunEB. No. 249^1 Jost wonder if it was the motion that he went back
with that I don't remember — ^it looks like he has got his hand on his head — I
don't remember seeing that. Of course, the pictures would show.
Mr. T.nERUjgR. Yes ; when you pick one of them out it's hard to break it down
and pick them out
Mr. Zapbxtdeb. Yes; it's hard. We run them in single frames — and to get
the main shot — it's hard. _
Mr. TitKBPJCB. Now, let's turn over to picture 25S^these all do look like they
are from your film?
Mr. Zatoudeb. Yes; they are — I know this — I have seen it so many timea.
In fact, I used to have nigbtmarea The thing would come every night — wake
up and see this.
Mr. Liebeleb. What about 255 — what about that one?
Mr. Zapbxtdeb. That’s stfU the same series.
Mr. That's still the same series— they keep moving along.
Mr. Zafbxtdes. Yes.
Mr. Luseleb. And let's look at No. 213 — as we go along here — then he does
start moving sharply to the left
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; when you take it frame by frame, it could have been just
2 or 3 seconds, but the impression was that he was leaning over and not just
sitting there and looking over that and grabbing himself at the left side.
Mr. Liebeleb. Yes ; moving toward Mrs. Kennedy.
Mr. Zapbudeb. That's what impressed me. Now, what nhmber aie you on?
Mr. Liebeleb. 313 — ^you remember that one?
Mr. Zapbudeb. That was — that was the horrible one.
Mr. Liebeleb. It appears to you then, that this book of pictures here as you
look through it, are your pictures?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. Now, Mr. Zapmder, after you had the film developed I under-
stand Mr. Sorrels from the Secret Service came over and helped you get the
films developed and you gave two copies of your films to Mr. Sorrels, is that
correct?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes. One we have sent to Washington the same night and one
went over for the viewers of the FBI on Ervay Street.
Mr. Liebeleb. That's the Secret Service?
Mr. Zapbudeb. The Secret Service — I brought one roll there and they told
me to dispatch it by Army plane or I don’t know what they had done with it
but it was supposed to have gone to Washington and one of them, I brieve,
remained here with Mr. Sorrels. He came to my oflSce quite a few times to
show them to different people.
Mr. Llebeler. Now, I understand that you, yourself, retained the original
film?
Mr. Zapbudeb. No ; I don't have that at all — I don’t have any at all. They
were sold to Time and Life magazines.
Mr. Liebeleb. You sold that to Life magazine?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes,
Mr. Liebeleb. The Commission is interested in one aspect of this and I
would like to ask you if you would mind telling ns how much they paid you
for that film.
Mr. Zapbudeb. For the film ?
Mr. Liebeleb. Yes.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Well, I just wonder whether I should answer it or not because
It involves a lot of things and it’s not one price — it's a question of how they are
going to use it, are they going to use it or are they not going to use it, so I will
say I really don’t know how to answer that
Mr. Liebeleb. Well, I am not going to even urge you to answer the question.
We will ask It and If you would rather not answer it — ^the Commission feels
it would be helpful.
Mr. Zapbudeb. I received $25,000, as you know, and I have given that to the
517
Firemen’s and Policemen’s Benevolence with a suggestion for Mrs. Tippit.
Tou know that?
Mr. Liebeleb. I don’t know that — you received $25,000?
Mr. Zapbudeb. $25,000 was paid and 1 have given it to the Firemen’s and
Policemen’s Fund.
Mr. LiEBELEBr You gave the whole $25,000?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes. This was all over the world, I got letters from all over
the world and newspapers — I mean letters from all over the world. It was all
over the world — I am surprised — that you don’t know it — I don’t like to talk
about it too much.
Mr. Liebeleb. We appreciate your answer very much.
Mr. Zapbudeb. 1 haven’t done anything, the way I have given it, at a time
like this.
Mr. Liebeleb. I want to tell you, you may not be aware of it yourself, but I
want to tell you that your film has been one of the most helpful things to the
work of the Commission that we could possibly have had because it has enabled
us to study the various ix>8itlons of the people In the car and to determine by
comparing it with the reenactment — by comi>aring it to the view from the
window of the building, to develop with a fair degree of accuracy the facts here.
Mr. Zapbudeb. I understand — and I am willing to be helpful but I am sorry
it had to be on an occasion like this. I am willing to be helpful but I wish this
would never have happened.
Mr. Liebeleb. Yes ; that’s right
Mr. Zapbudeb. I know they have taken my camera to Washington.
Mr. Liebeleb. It was a Bell & Howell camera, isn’t that right?
Mr. Zapbudeb. That’s right
Mr. Liebeleb. And you turned it over to the FBI and they have made tests on
It?
Mr. Zapbudeb. Yes ; and then Bell & Howell wanted it for their archives and
I thought they were through with it and let them have it In return, they gave
me, not for my personal use, but a sound projector which was given to the
Oold^ Age Group. It’s a place where old folks have a home. I asked them
to dcNoate something. I didn’t want the camera. I didn’t want anything for
myself. Then the FBI wanted the camera again and I referred th«n to the
Bell A Howell people.
Mr. Liebeleb. Yes ; the FBI asked for the camera back because the Commis-
sion wanted to determine whether there was any difference in the frame speed
as the camera unwound itself, as it went along.
Mr. Zapbudeb, Well, they claimed they told me it was about 2 frames fast —
instead of Ifi it was 18 frames and they told me it was about 2 frames fast in
the speed and they told me that the time between the 2 rapid shots, as I under-
stand, that was determined — the length of time it took to the second one and
that they were very fast and they claim it has proven it could be done by 1 man.
You know there was indication there were two?
Mr. Liebeleb. Your films were extremely helpful to the work of the Commis-
sion, Mr. Zapruder.
Mr. Zapbudeb. I am only sorry I broke down — I didn’t know I was going to do IL
Mr. Liebeleb. Mr. Zapruder, I want to thank you very much, for the Com-
mission, for coming down. It has been very helpful.
2ilr. Zapbudebl Well, I am ashamed of myself. I didn’t know I was going
to break down and for a man to— but it was a tragic thing, and when you
started a^ing me that, and I saw the thing all over again, and it was an awful
thing — I know very few people who had seen it like that — it was an awful
thing and I loved the President, and to see that happen before my eyes — his
head just opened up and shot down like a dog — it leaves a very, very deep
sentimental impression with you; it’s terrible.
Mr. Liebeleb. Well, you don’t have to feel ashamed about that at all, and
thank you very much. I enjoyed meeting you very much.
Mr, Zapbudeb. All right, any time you want some more help you can call on
me and I will be glad to come In.
Mr. Liebeleb. AIL right, thank you a lot.
Mr. Zapbudeb. Goodbye.
518
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Zapruder was questioned by Warren Commis-
sion counsel, Wesley Liebeler;
Mr. Liebeler. Did you have any impression as to the direction from which these
shots came?
Mr. Zapruder. No, I also thought it came from back of me. Of course, you can't
tell when something is in line — it could come from anywhere,* * *
Mr. Liebeler tried to focus Mr. Zapruder’s memory of the event:
Mr. Liebeler. But you didn't form any opinion at that time as to what direction
the shots did come from actually?
Mr. Zapruder. No.
Mr. Liebeler. And you indicated that they could have come also from behind or
from any other direction except perhaps from the left, because they could have been
from behind or even from the front.
Mr. Zapruder then agreed that any direction was possible and
that he had no way of determining the bullet's course. He did,
however, distinguish between the shots:
Mr. Liebeler. Did you form any opinion about the direction from which the shots
came by the sound, or were you just upset by the thing you had seen?
Mr. Zapruder. No, there was too much reverberation. There was an echo which
gave me a sound all over • * * Yes, the reverberation was such that a sound — as it
would vibrate — it didn’t vibrate so much but as to whether it was a backfire — in
other words, I didn't from the first sound, from him leaning over — I couldn’t think
it was a shot, but of course, the second — I think it was the second shot * * * (that
gave the reverberations).
Secret Service Agent Paul E. Landis, Jr., wrote a statement on
the shooting, dated November 30, 1963. Mr. Chairman, I would like
to have that document entered into the record as JFK exhibit F-
647.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[The information follows:]
519
JFK Exhibit F-647
TH£ ASSASSINATION OF PHESIU£NT JOHN F. KENNED!
ON NOVEUBER 22, I963 , AX DaULaS, TEXAS
Statement of Special Agont Paul E. landie, Jr,, United States Secret
Service, concerning his activities and official duties on November 22, 1963,
On Novenber 22, 1963, I -rrired at Love Field Airport, UaUUs, Texas,
at 11:35 a,m», having traveled from Ft, worth, Texas, to Dallas, Texas, on
board U, S, Air Force Flight #6970. ^pon iqr arrival 1 dlsenbarked from the
aircraft and lanediately wallced to where the motorcade vehicles were parked.
Special Agent Sam Kinney was the first person that 1 recognized, and 1 remember
speaking to him and standing by the Follow-up car and Jokingly asldng hla if he
could tell me where the Follow-up car was.
After speaking to Sam, 1 walked over to Special Agont Win l^scson just
to double check to see if I was still assigned to working the Follow-up oar as
had previously been arranged. Be was standing by the front right fender of the car
In which the President would be riding, and he told me that 1 was still to ride
In ths PoUow-ap car.
Only a vsry few moments later the President's Aircraft was pulling up
to its BDorlng spot and I jsoved up to where I would be near the president and
First Lady whan they dleembaiked from the aircraft.
There appeared to be a very large crowd at the airport and most of the
people were restrained behind a chain-link fence which was about four or five
feet hl^. On the opposite side of the fence from the crowd there was a very
i^rrow sidewalk and curbing idiich ran along ths fence-line.
There were several people on the same side of the fence as the
President but moat of them were photographers.
As soon as the President and First Lady disembarked from the Aircraft,
Urs, Kennedy was presented a bouquet of roses, Ths President was also presented
what appeared to be two hand<-drawn charcoal portraits of himself and Mrs, Keuasdy
In a black leather and glass folding frame, 1 believe that this was given to
him by a lady wearing a red cost.
Just after the President received the black leather frame 1 held out
my hand and he banded it to me, X had been standing just off to Mrs. Kennedy's
left, slightly in front of her. She was on the left side of ths President.
At this tims the President and First Lady started walking towards ths
crowd which warn restrained behind the fence. On the way, they did stop for a few
seconds to talk to an eldorly lady In a wheel chair who was on the field area
about thirty feet from where the above presentations ware made.
They then walked over to the crowd and walked along the fence from
their right to their left. At first I was in front of the president, clearing a
patiiway through the photographers and observing the crowd reaching over the fence;
Commission Exhibit 1024 — Continued
520
Page Statement of Special Agent Paul S. Landis, Jr., dated Not. 30, 1963:
but I noticed that krs. Kennedy was moving along slower and becoming separated
from the President so I asked another agent, I don*t recall who, to move up
where I was and I dropped back to assist Special Agent Clinton Hill who was next
to Mrs, Kennedy, I continued to keep a pathway clear for Mrs, Kennedy, removing
small hax:d signs that had been dropped in her pathway on the sidewalk and
occasionally cautioning to watch out for the curbing. At one point, where the
direction of the fence made a right angle turn to the left of the way we were
moving, I do remember reaching up and holding a fairly large flag away that
someone was waving over the fence. Only a few feet further and the fence and
sidewalk made another 90 degree turn in the direction in which we were originally
moving,
At this point we stopped momentarily and started in the direction of
the cars which were slightly behind us and had been moving a.t ftng towards us •
Mrs. Kennedy asked where the President was and SA Hill noticed him continuing
along the fence shaking hands with the crowd; so Mrs. Kennedy returned to the
fence and did the same.
Only a short distance later the President and First Lady stopped * Ha ving
hands hnd entered their automobile. I stood by the right rear side until the car
started moving and then hopped on the right rear portion of the zig^t running
board of the Follow-up car. 1 was staxviing with ny right leg on the running
board and isj left leg up ovex* and Inside the Followup car. I stayed in tlds
position until we were leaving the Airport area and remarked that, "I might as
well get all the way In, " and I did so. 1 glanced at my watch but I don’t
recall the tlma.
Special Agents Glen Bennett and George Hickey were seated to my left
respectively in the rear of the Follow-up car. Mr. David Powers was seated
directly in front of me In the center portion of the Follow-up car and Mr. Kenneth
O^Donnell was seated on Mr. Power’s left. Special Agent Sam Kinney was driving
and AlSAIC Hoberts was seated in the right front seat. Special Agents John Heady,
Clinton Hill, and ‘Hm McIntyre were standing on the right front, left front, and
left rear portions of the running board, respectively.
The motorcade had not proceeded far idien AISaXC noberts asked me to get
back on the outside running board, ’'Just In case,” which I immediately did. The
crowd was about two deep along each side of the road and I would guess that we
were traveling about twenty miles per hour.
As the motorcade proceeded towards the main business section of downtown
Dallas I watched the crowd for anyone trying to run towards the President<s car
or any person who might be ho ldin g anything hansful in his hands. I observed
the rooftops and windows of the buildings along the route. On the outskirts of
town most of the buildings were of a one or two story type structure and very
few people were on the rooftops . The crowd was three or more deep along the
street as we proceeded towards downtown Dallas with most intersections more
heavily crowded. The outskirts seemed to consist mostly of used ear lots. Junk
Commission Exhibit 1024 — Continued
page Three of Statcnont of Special Agent Paul Landia, Jr,, dated Nov. 30, 1963 j
dealers, auto parts stores, and this typical type of neighborhood. At one inter-
section there were some Cuban Pickets but I don't recall exactly what their signs
said except that they did have "Cuba" on then.
A little further towards town sone people had a sign asking the
President to please stop and shake hands, which he saw as he passed and stopped,
X ioioediately ran up to his car as it stopped and assuzned a position next to hia
and observed the crowd as it merged on the car, especially watching the hands.
)lost of the people were children but I do remember one of the adult ladies who was
bolding the sign, remarking, "It worked, our sign workedl"
At various places along the route 1 remember Ur, Dave Powers standing
up and taking movies of the President's car and the crowd.
The closer we came to downtown Dallas the larger the crowds became. At
several places they were forcing their way into the street and there was Just
barely enough room for the cars to get through. There were two motorcycle escorts
on each side of the President's and the Follow-up car and in several Instances
Che crowd was so close that the motorcycles could not get through and had to drop
completely behind the Follow-up car. During these instances bA Clint Hill would
run up and Jusf) on the left rear bua^r of the President's car and he wduld rids
chere until the crowd was further back away from the President's car.
Just before we reached the heart of downtown Dallas, I remember noticing
some new looking, very high, multi-storied skyscrapers and I remarked to Jack
leady that there were even people way up on the roof of one. I think the motor-
cade nade a rl^t t\im onto Street, as that is the only street sign 1 saw
and remembered, I remember thinking to myself that about every town 1 know
ras a Uain Street,
I'm not sure how far we traveled on Uain Street, but I do know that
:his is ip^ere the crowd seemed heaviest. The buildings were tall on both si4«s
9 f the street but I didn't notice many people in the windows, I continued %o
ican the crowds on the street and the buildings along the route. I glanced at
ho President's car somewhere along Uain Street and saw Clint Hill again staxiding
:n the left rear busbar behind Urs. Kennedy who was seated to the President's
left. Governor Connally was seated in front of the President and Mrs. ConnaXly
■as in front of Mrs, Kennedy.
The crowd lined both sides of the street and in several places was
•ight out into the street leaving barely enough room to gat throu^.
Wot long after we turned onto Uain Street there was one boy who, I
*culd say, was in his early teens who ran out from the crowd after the President's
ir.d Follow-up cars had passed and tried to overtake the President's car, I saw
■ia coming and tapped SA heady on the shoulder and pointed towards him. lie was
'^rrylng a camera. SA Heady Jun?)ed off the running board, overtook the boy and
pushed h'ii* back into the crowd.
Commission Exhibit 1024 — Continued
522
page Four of Statement of Special Agent Paul Landis, Jr,, dated Mov, 30, 1963:
When we jreached the end of Uain Street we turned right and approached
a gradual left turn. As we approached the intersection and while we wore turning
left, the crowd seemed to thin and almost disappear around the turn, I then oade
a qiiiclc surveillance of a building vdiich was to be on the president* a right once
the left turn was completed. It appeared to be the last one in eight. It was a
Bodernlstlo type building, approximately eight stories high, and it had large
glass windows. I also seen to recollect orange paneling or siding. None of the
windows were open, and I did not see anyone etanding by then. I suraised that the
building was closed or that all its employees were out on the street comer.
As the Prosident*8 car continued around the corner, I continued to
surrey the crowd along the rightband aide of the road and noticed that it was
fairly scattered, with hardly enough people to fom a single line. I continued
to look ahead to an overpass over the route we were traveling. At approxlnately
this point, I would say, the President's car and the Follow-up car had Just '
completed their turns axid both were straightening out.
At this moment I heard idiat sounded like the report of a high-powered
rifle from behind me, over ay right shoulder. When I heard the sound there was
no question In sqt mind what it was. Ny first glance was at the president, as I
was practically looking In his direction anyway. I saw him novlng in a manner
which I thought was to look in the direction of the sound. I did not realize
that President Kennedy bad been shot at this point.
I immediately returned my gaze, over ny right shoulder, toward the
modernistic building I had observed before, with a quick glance I saw nothing
and Izoediately started scanning the crowd at the intersection from mj right to
ny left. I observed nothing unusual and began to think that the sound had. been
that of a fire cracker but I hadn't seen any smoke. In fact, I recall Special
Agent Jack Eeady saying, “What was it? A Fire Cracker?" I remarked, "I don't
know; I don't see any smoke." So far the lapsed period of time could not have
been over two or three seconds.
All during this time I continued to scan the crowd, returning ny gaze
towards the President's car. It must have been another second or two before the
next shot was fired because, as I recall having seen nothing out of the ordinary,
I then thought that smybe one of the cars in the motorcade had had a blowout that
had echoed off the buildings. I looked at the right front tire of the President's
car and saw it was all right. I then glanced to see the right rear tire, but
could not because the Follow-up car was too close.
I also thought of trying to run and jump on the President's car but did
not think I could make it because of the speed at idiich we were traveling. I
decided I had better stay where I was so that I would at least be near the First
Lady, to whoa I am assigned. I think that it was at this point that I thought,
"Faster, Faster, Faster," thinking that wo could not get out of the area soon
enough. However, I don't have any idea as to how fast we were then moving.
Commission Exhibit 1024 — Continued
523
page Five of Statement of Special Agent Paul iS. Landia, Jr., dated Nov, 30, 1963;
I had drawn Biy gun, l«t I am not sure exactly when I did this. I did
leave my suit coat unbuttoned all during the motorcade iwveaent, thinking at the
time that I could get to ay gun faster this way. If I had to.
I glanced towards the President and he still appeared to be fairly
upright in his seat, leaning slightly toward Urs. Kennedy with his head tilted
slightly back. X think Urs. Kennedy had her right arm around the P resident ^s
shoulders at this tiae. I also remember Special Agent Clinton Hill attvopting
to climb onto the back of the President's car.
It was at this moment that I heard a second report and it appeared that
the President* 8 head split open idth a muffled exploding sound. I can best
describe the sound as I heard it, as the sound you would get by shooting a high
powered bullet into a five gallon can of water or shooting Into a neHon. X saw
pieces of flesh and blood flying through the air and the president slumped out of
sight towards Urs. Kennedy.
‘fhe time lapse between the first and second report oust have been about
four or five seconds.
My iisaedlate thought was that the President could not possibly be alive
after being hit like he was. I still was not certain from which direction the
second shot came, but my reaction at this time was that the shot cane fron some^
where towards the front, rlght-4iand side of the road.
I did not notice anyone on the overpass, and I scanned the area to the
right of and below the overpass where the terrain sloped towards the road on
which we were traveling. The only person I recall seeing clearly was a Negro
male in light green slacks and a beige colored shirt running from my left to rlg^t,
up the slope, across a grassy section, along a sidewalk, towards some steps and
what appeared to be a low stone wall. He was bent over while running and I started
^0 point towards him, but I didn’t notice anything in his hands and by this time
we were going under the overpass at a very high rate of speed. I was looking
back and saw a motorcycle polioeman stopping along the curb approximately adjacent
to where X saw the Negro running.
After we rode \inder the overpass X again looked at the President’s car
and saw Special Agent Clint Hill lying across the trunk. He was looking back
towards the FoUow-aip car shaking his head back and forth and gave a thumbs-down
sign with his hand.
A'ISAIC Roberts asked if anyone got the exact time of the shooting and
scaeona said"about 12:30 p.m.;" then someone told me to get inside the car and
pulled me by the am. Uy sun passes fell off and Special Agent Bennett handed
them to me. By now we were on an ishqpressway and a few people were standing In
spots along the way waving as we went by.
Commission Exhibit 1024 — Continued
524
Pago Six of Statement of Special Agent Paul t.. Landis, Jr., dated Nor. 30, 1?63:
AlSAlU Koberts was tolling the other agents in the Follow-up car to
cover Vice-President Johnson as soon as wo stopped.
Sometime around 12:37 P-ra. wo arrived at Parkland Uemorial Hospital.
I iraaediately ran to the left roar side of the President *3 car, reached over and
tried to help krs. Kennedy up by taking hold of her shoulders. She did not want
to let go of President Kennedy whose head sho held in her lap and she was bending
over him. She said something like, ”No, I want to stay with
Agent Hill had in the meantime opened the left rear door of the
Presidential Convertible, stepped inside and took Mrs. Kennedy by the arm. She
released the President and someone said, **Cov«r up his head," Agent Hill took
off his sxdt coat and covered up the F resident >s head. I also remember Mr. Powers
leaning in the car and saying, "Oh, Not, Ur. Presidentl Ur, Presidentl"
l^y this timo somsone was liftiing the President's body out of the right
side of the car. Agent Hill helped Urs. Kennedy out of the car, and I followed.
Mrs, Kennedy's purse and hat and a cigarette lighter were on the back seat. 1
picked these three items up as I walked through the car and followed Urs. Kennedy
into the hospital.
The President's body was taken directly to an Junergency Hoorn, and 1
think 1 remember Urs. Kennedy following the people in but coming out almost
Immediately, fhe door to the iimergency Koom was closed and I stayed by Urs.
Kennedy's side. Someone, in the meantime, had brought a chair for Urs. Kennedy
to sit in and she sat Just outside of the tJnergency Koom. ^Hiere were several
people milling around and with the help of a nurse we cleared all unauthorized
personnel out of the immediate area.
Someone came out of the Koom that the President was In and asked if
anyone knew his blood i*yp®* aSaIC Kellerman and Sa Hill immediately reached for
their wallets. ASAIC Kelleraan gave the man the information first.
At one point someone else came out of the President's Room again and
said he was still breathing. Urs. Kennedy stood up and said, "bo you mean he may
Uve?" No one answered.
Most of the time while in the hospital I stayed right next to Mrs.
Kennedy, fidce, I believe, she went into the Koom where the President was; however,
I reiained outside by the door. A short time later I still remember several
people standing around, and I asked a doctor for help in clearing the area.
At approximately 2:00 p.m. the President's body was wheeled from the
hospital in a coffin into an ambulance. Special Agent Andrew Berger drove the
ambulance; ASAIC Ke Herman and ATSAIC Stout were in the front seat. Mrs. Kennedy,
Admiral Burkley, and Agent Hill rode in the rear of the ambulance with the
President's body.
Commission Exhibit 1024— Continued
525
?ag3 Seven of Statement of Special Agent Paul i£, Landis, Jr,, dated Nov. 30, 1963-
I rcxla in the FoUoi»f-up car behind the ambulance which departed the
hospital at 2:0^ p.m.
At 2:14 p.m,, the President* a body arrived at Love Field Airport and
several Secret Service agonts Immediately carried it on board U. S. Air Force No.
One via the roar door, I followed on board behind Urs. Kennedy and then o»ved to
the forward section of the plane, I witnessed the swearing in of President
Johnson at 2:39 p.m, in the center coiqjartment on board Air Force #1, and at
2:47 p.m, departed Love Field Airport, Dallas, Texas, via Air Force No. One, with
lirs. Kennedy and the body of the late President Kennedy.
Upon our arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, lid., at 5:5S p.au I helped
carry t^^e late President Kennedy* s coffin from air Force #1. The body was placed
in an ambulance which departed Andraws Air Force Base at approxiniately 6:10 p.m.^
driven by Special Agent Williao Greer, ASAIC KeUenaan, Admiral Burkloy, and I
rode in the front seat of the ambulance, Mrs. Kennedy and Attorney General Bobert
Kennedy rode in the rear of the ambulance with President Kennedy* s body.
The above party arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Ud«, at
approximately 6:55 p.m. Special Agent Hill and I escorted Mrs. Kennedy to the
I7th Floor where we inmadiately secured the area. Only hospital panonnal
assigned to the area, Kennedy family members and friends, and authorized personnel
-«ard allowed in the area.
I only left the 17th Floor twice virile Mrs. Kennedy was there. Once,
to find ASAIC Kellerman in the hospital morgue and give him a telephone massage
from Chief Rowley, ihe other time was to find a rihite House driver.
At 3:56 a.m., on November 23, 1963, Mrs. Kennedy and Attorney General
Robert Kennedy departed Bethesda Naval Hospital via ambulance, acconpanying the
late President John F. Kennedy* s body to the Vihite House. Special Agent William
Irear was driving and ASAIC Ke Herman accomi^anied. Special Agent Clinton Hill
rode in the first linousine behind the ambulance and I rode in the second limousine.
The above Party arrived at the White House at 4:24 a.m.
Paul K. landis, Jr.
Special Agent
U, S. Secret Service
Commission Exhibit 1024 — Continued
- 79 -
35-379 O
34
526
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Landis was in the follow-up car, behind the
Presidential limousine, on the outside running board on the right.
He may be seen in JFK exhibit 155. He indicated that the first shot
sounded like the report of a high-powered rifle from behind me,
over my right shoulder. According to his statement, the second shot
might have come from a different direction. He said: “I still was
not certain from which direction the second shot came, but my
reaction at this time was that the shot came from somewhere
toward the front, right-hand side of the road.”
Another witness, S. M. Holland, also saw signs of a shot coming
from a group of trees on the knoll. Mr. Chairman, I would like to
enter Mr. Holland's testimony before the Warren Commission, JFK
exhibit F-648, into the record.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[The information follows:]
527
JFK Exhibit F-648
TESTIMONY OF S, M. HOLLAND
The testimony of S. M. Holland was taken at 2 :20 p.m., on April S, 1964, in the
office of the U.S. attorney, 301 Post Office Buildinp;. Bryan and Ervay Streets,
Dallas, Tex«, by Mr. Samuel A. Stem, assistant counsel of the President’s
Commission. Mr. S. M. Holland accompanied by his attorney, Mr. Balford
Morrison.
Mr. Stebx. Would you rise please and raise your right hand so as to be
sworn.
Do you solemnly swear the testhuony that you are about to gtre will be the
tmth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. Hotjjlxp. 1 do.
Mr. Steszt. Sit down, please.
You hare recorded Mr. Morrison's presence?
The Beportcr. Yes.
Mr. Sterx. Mr. Holland, you hare received a letter from the Commission
asking yon to come and testify today? f
Mr. HOTXAyp. Yes.
Mr. Stcsx. As you know, the Commission is Inquiring Into all of the facts
concerning the assassination of President Kennedy and we want your erldence
concerning what you saw at the time of the assassination from the place you
were standing. May we hare, for the record, your name and residence address?
Mr. HoLLA:cn. S. ^L Holland, 1119 Lucille Street, Irrlng, Tex.
Mr. Stzbn. What Is your occupation?
Mr. HoiXAiri). Signal superrlsor for Union Terminal Railroad.
Mr. Stekx. How long hare you been employed by that organization?
Mr. EaLUL^tD. Union Terminal since 1938w
Mr. Sterk. Now, on Friday, Norember 22, will you describe what yon did, con-
cerning the President’s risit and where you were.
Mr. Hollar. Well, about 11 :00 o’clock, a couple of policemen and a ploln-
clothesman, came up on top of the triple underpass, and we had some men work-
ing up there, and I knew that they was going to bare a parade, and I left my
office and walked up to the underpass to talk to the policemen. And they
me during the parade if I would come back up there and Identify iieople
that was supposed to be on that overpass. That is, the railroad people.
Mr. Snazr. Where are your offices, Mr. Holland?
Mr. Houjlxd. At the Union Terminal Station.
Mr. 9mc. Is that within walking distance of the triple oven^ass?
Mr. Hou.axp. Tea, it is. About — less than a qiiarter of a mile, a very short
distance.
Mr. Stehx. And these policemen that you spoke to, there were 3 altogether?
Mr. Hoxxa:^. Two— there were 2 city policemen and 1 man in plainclothes.
I didn’t talk to him. I talked to the city policemen.
Mr. Stexx. You don't know what his affiliation was?
Mr. Hollaxu. I know he was a plainclothes detective, or FBI agent nr some
528
tbincp like that, but I don’t know, and I told him I would be back and after
Innch I wonld eo up there.
Mr. Stern. Approximately what time did you arrive up there?
Mr. HOU.AND. Oh, I arrived up there, I gueris, about a quarter until 12,
and I would identify each person that came up there that he worked at the
Union Terminal, and department so-and'So.
Mr. Stern. Wliom did you see there at 11 :45 when you returned, from then
untU 12:30?
Mr. Hoixand. 'Well, I would have to try to remember who all was up there then.
There was Mr. Beilly and Mr. R. G. Dodd.
Mr. Stern. Mr. Reilly?
Mr. Holland. RelUyv
Mr. Steen. “Who was
Mr. Holland. R. C. Dodd, and N. H. Potter and Luke Winbnm.
Mr. SixEN. Luke?
Mr. Holland. Winbum.
Mr. Stern. And
Mr. Hoiland. And a fellow by the name of Johnson, he works in the car
department.
Mr. Stern. Johnson.
Mr. Holland. And there was anothn* fellow who worked at the car depart-
ment, tall, blond-headed boy, and I can’t remember bis name.
lir. Stern. That mokes six people so far. Are these all employees of :
Mr. Holland. Tea.
Mr. Stern. Of the terminal?
Mr. Holland. Tes, and they were two men, one of them worked for the
Katy, and one for the T. A P., that I don’t know their names, but I do know
that they were railroad people. They were over on business. Working on those
business cars, and one of them was a Katy employee, and one was a T. A P.
employee.
Mr. Stern. Could you give me their full names?
Mr. Hoixand. Texas A Pacific, and the Missouri, B^sas, Texas Railroad.
Mr. Steen. You don’t know the names of those particular men?
Mr. Holland. No; I don’t
Mr. Steen. Did you see them here today?
Mr. HofLLAND. I know the policemen talked to them and got identification
from them.
. Mr. Stern. Yes; but they are not as far as yon know, the two gentlemen
that you saw sitting In the anteroom to the U.S. attorney’s ofiSce Just before
Mr. Holland. No; neither one of those.
Mr. Stean. Did you recognize either of those two men?
Mr. Holland. One of th«n is a cabdriver, and the other one is an eiectricUm
at Union Terminal. The large fellow is a cabdriver.
Mr. Stern. The electrician, do you know his name?
Mr. Holland. Frank Reilly.
Mr. Stern. There were two other men out there. Perhaps y<Ai didn’t notice
them. I spoke to them after 1 spoke to you.
Mr. Holland. Well, at the time the parade got started they was, I guess —
Davey Cowzert was up there, too.
Mr, Stern. But, Just to finish with the two, you didn’t recognize ^ther of
the two people who were in the anteroom a few momenta ago as being people
who were on the overpass that day?
Mr. Holland. No,
Mr. Stern. All right
Mr. Holland. There was two people I did recognize and that was the cab-
driv»' and Mr. Reilly was out there and that policeman, he was up there with
me.
Mr. Sti3N. You recognized the policeman as being the policeman who was
on the triple overpass at the time?
Mr. Holland. Yes.
Mr. Stern. Fine. Now, another name Just occurred to you of someone else.
Mr. Holland. Cowzert [spelUngl C-o-w-z-e-r-t Cowzert
240
529
Mr. STEKtr. Is be also an employee?
Mr. Hollaitd. Yes; he Is.
Mr. STEa:^. Were all the people there, as far as you know, at the time the
Presidential motorcade—
Mr. Houjind. Yes.
Mr. Steb: 9. Came into riew?
Mr. Holland. One more, If I can remember Ms name. One that run around
the comer of the fence with me. He was right behind nie»why in the world —
he was one of the first ones around the fence when we ran around the fence
to what was happening.
Mr. Stebn. Before we get to that, bow about the police. How many police
ofiicers were on the overpass at the time?
Holland. There were two Dallas Police officers up there at that time.
Mr. Steen. Tell me if this is correct, Mr. Holland. At the time the Presl*
dential motorcade arrived, to the best of your recollection, on the overpass
there were two uniformed Dallas Police, and the following employees of the
Terminal Co.: Yourself, Mr. Reilly, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Potter, itr. Wlnbum, Mr.
Johnson, Mr. Cowzert, and perhaps one other man?
Mr. Holland. That's right
Mr. Stebn. So, that would be eight including yourself, plus two employees of
the railroad. Oneof theT. AP. andoneof theKaty?
Mr. Holland. That's right At that time. Now, like I said a while ago, by the
time they started there was quite a few come up there, but I can’t remember
who it was or their names, because—
Mr. Stebn. Before the motorcade started?
Mr. Holland. Before the motorcade started.
Mr. Stebn. These were people you recognUed as employees?
Mr. Holland. Some of them, and some of them I did not recognize, but I
think he was asking for credentials.
Mr. Stebn. The uniformed policeman?
Mr. Holland. Yes; one on that side, and one on this side to keep them
Mr. Stebn. Yes; and did you participate in identifying people as being ter-
minal or railroad employees?
Mr. Holland. When they first started arriving, yes ; it was my purpose for
^ing up there.
Mr. Stebn. So, that it Is fair to say that at the time the President’s motor-
cade turned Into this area, there was no one on the overpass that yon didn't
know either as Terminal Co. employees, or railroad employees, or as a policeman?
Mr. Holland. Wouldn't be fair to say that, because there was quite a few
came up there right in the last moments.
Mr. Stebn. There were? Tell us about that.
Mr. Hoxxand. That I couldn’t recognize. There wasn't too many people
up there, but there were a few that came up there the lost few minutes, but
the policemen were questioning them and getting their identification, and
Mr. Stebn. Is this Just ahont the time of the motorcade?
Mr. Holland. Just about the time, or Just prior to It, because there was
a few up there that I dldn’t-*-tbat I didn't recognize myself.
Mr. Stebn. Had they been, as far os you could tell, checked by the police?
Mr. Holland. He was checking them as they came on top of the underpass.
Mr. Stebn. Did it seeih to you that everytMy up there bad been checked
by this policeman for identification?
Mr. Hoxxand. I think everyone was checked by some person.
Mr. Stebn. Yes. Con you estimate the number of people that were on the
overpass Immediately as the motorcade came Into view?
Mr. Hotxand. Weil, I would estimate that there was between 14 to 18 people.
Mr. Stebn. Now, where was the motorcade when you first saw it?
Mr. Holland. Turned off the Main Street — In front of the county Jail.
Mr. Stebn. Turning right off of Main onto Houston?
Mr. Holland. It was coming down Main and turned off of Main onto Houston.
Mr. Steun. At that lime will you show me on this drawing where you were
and Just make a mark and put the No. 1 next to that mark. That Is where
0
530
yoa were at that time? Roughly la the middle of the overpast over Elm
Street?
Mr. Hollaitd. That's right ^
Mr. STcarr. And where, in relation to the concrete fence that
Mr. Hollaztd. Picket fence or concrete?
Mr. STcarv. No; the concrete.
Mr. Holland. Oh, the concrete banister?
Mr. Sterw. The concrete banister. Were you right at the banister?
Mr. HoLLA2n>. I was; would yon like to see the exact location?
Mr. STEH9. Yes.
Mr. Hollajcyd. This is my son standing in the exact location I was in [Indi-
cating].
Mr. STEEXf. Oif the record a moment.
(DiscussioD off the record.)
Mr. Stcbxt. Back on the record. Well, then, we'll mark this as Exhibit B,
reserving Exhibit A for this drawing, and Exhibit H is a photograph yon took
on Satnrday, November 23, of your son standing in the position at the banister
of the triple overpass where yon were at the time the motorcade came into view.
Mr. Hollaivd. That's right
Mr. Smur. Fine. That is quite a good picture. At that time, can you
indicate, to the best of your knowledge where other persons were standing on
the overpass, and xmrticularly in relationship to the two police officers who
were on the overpass?
Mr. Holland. Well, as well as I remember, one police officer was standing
right behind me, or pretty close behind me.
ilr. Srearr. Put a “2" where you believe he was standing.
Mr. Holland. He was standing in close enough so that be could see, but
he could also see the people, and the other policeman, I think, unless he left Im-
mediately before this happened — see, when they turned there, I didn't turn
around and look back any more, but the last time I saw this policeman he was
standing over here on this side, about [indicating].
Mr. Steoxt. Standing almost directly behind you?
Mr. Hoixaio. Yes. ^
Mr. Stebn. But, on the other side of the overpass, facing west?
Mr. Hollai^o. Yes; all this way, across the tracks. See, these are oU rail-
road tracks, and he was standing over hm on this side immediately before
this motorcade turned this. Now, after they turned, 1 don’t know, but— because
I was watching them.
Mr. SiXBir. Yea.
Would you put a “3” where you believe he was standing and can yon indicate
on there where yon believe the other 12 to 15 or 16 people were who were on
the overpass at this time.
Mr. Hollaxtd. Well
Mr. Srsair. Were they all standing in one group?
Mr. Hollaxtd. There, was a pretty close group between this column here,
and this place right In there. In other words. If I con — ^had a shot of it, we
could find that pretty close. 1 don't know that I have one.
Mr. Srsair. What yon have indicated on the drawing is on the part of the
overpass from one side of Elm Street to the other.
Mr. HoUAxrn. Yes ; this is one side of Hm Street, and this would be the
other. If you would get over here there would be a banister or something In
yoor way, and this Is grass out here, and yon couldn’t get to get too good a view,
..and most of the people was from this tight in here, over to ri^t in here
[indicating].
Mr. Stebit. All right Now
Bfr. HcMXAxm. And this bench runs right along similar to that, up here to
this [indicating].
Mr. Stebxt. That Is a wooden picket fence that yon are describing that runs
from the rad of the concrete banister?
Mr. HoxxAxroL That's right
Mr. Stebxt. Over to a little—
Mr. Holland. Little house tliere.
Mr. Stern. Little
Mr. HoLUiND. Whftt do they call that thing?
Mr. Morrison. I don't know.
Mr. Stern. Little pavilion ? Little concrete pavilion?
Mr. Holland. Yee.
Mr. Stern. Now, what did you observe from that point on, Mr. Holland?
Mr. Holland. Well, I observed the motorcade when it turned off of Main
Street onto Houston Street and back on Elm Street There was two young
ladies right across from this sigDt which would be, I judge — would say they
were standing about here [indicating].
Mr. Stern. Put No. 4 there, please. Fine.
Mr. Holland. And the motorcade was coming down in this fashion, and the
President was waving to the people on this side [indicating].
Mr. Stern. That is the north side of Elm Street?
Mr. Holland. Yes ; on the north side.
Mr. Stern. AU right
Mr. Holland. And she was looking in this direction [Indicating].
Mr. Stern, “She,” is Mrs. Kennedy?
Mr. Holland. His wife. And about that time
Mr. Stern. Was looking in a southern direction?
Mr. Holland. In the southern direction. ,
Mr. Stebn. South side of Elm Street?
Mr. Holland. And about that time he went over like that [Indicating], and
put his hand up, and she was still looking off, as well as I could tell.
Mr. Stern. Now, when you say, “he went like that,” you leaned forward and
raised your right hand?
Mr. Holland. Pulled forward and hand just stood like that momentarily. ,
Mr. Stern. With his right hand?
Mr. Holland, His right hand ; and that was the first report tliat I heard.
Mr. Stern. What did it sound like?
Mr. Holland. Well, It was pretty loud, and naturally, nudemeatb this under*
pass here it would be a little louder, the concussion from underneath it, it was
a pretty loud report, and the car traveled a few yards, and Governor Con*
noUy turned In this fashion, like that [indicating] with his band out, and
ano^er report.
Mr. Stern. With his right hand out?
Mr. Holland. Turning to his right
Mr. Stern. To his right?
Mr. Holland. And another report rang ont and he slumped down In his seat,
and about that time Mrs. Kennedy was looking at these girls over here [indl*
eating]. The girls standing — now one of them was taking a picture, and the
other one was just standing there, and she turned around facing the President
and Governor Connolly. In other words, she realized what vs'm happening, I
gnesa.
Now, I mean, that was api>arently that--she turned hack around, and by
the time she could get turned around be was hit again along In — I’d say along In
here [indlcatlDg].
Mr. Stern. How do yon know that? Did you observe that?
Mr. Holland. I observed it It knocked him completely down on the floor.
Over, just slumped completely over. That second
Mr. Stern. Did you hear a third report?
Mr. Holland. I heard a third report and I counted four shots and about the
nme time all this was happening, and in this group of trees— [Indicating].
Mr. Stebn. Now, you are indicating trees on the north side of Elm Street?
Mr. Holland. These trees right along here [indicating].
Mr. Stern. Let’s mark this Exhibit G and draw a circle around the trees
you are referring to.
Mr. Holland^ Right in there. (Indicating.)
There was a shot, a report, I don’t know whether it was a shot. I can’t
say that. And a puff of smoke came ont about 6 or 3 feet above the ground
532
right oat from under those trees. And at just about this location from where I
was standin;; 70 U coaid see that puff of smoke, like someone had thrown a fire-
cracker, or something out, and that is just about the wtiy it sounded. It wasn’t
as loud as the previous reports or shots.
Mr. dTESif. What number would that have been in th e ■ ■
Mr. Holland. Well, that would — they were S4> close together.
Mr. Stebn. The second and third or the third and fourth ?
Mr. HoLLAtn). The third and fourth. The third and the fourth.
Mr. Stebzt. So, that it might have been the third or the fourth ? .
Mr. Houuiim. It could have been the third or fourth, bat there were definitely ^
four reports.
Mr. SrcBzr. You have no doubt about that?
Mr. HoLT^n. I have no doubt about it. I have no doubt about seeing that
puit cf smoke come out from under those trees either.
Mr. Stkbx. Mr. Holland, do you recall making a statement to an agent of
of the FBI several days after?
Mr. HoLXJkZn>. I made a statement that afternoon In Sheriff Bill Decker's
office, and then the Sunday or the Sunday following the Friday, there were
two FBI men out at my house at the time that Oswald was shot.
Mr. SratN. Did you tell them that you heard distinctly four shots at that
time?
Mr. HoLULsnx. Yes.
Mr. SnXN. You were certain then?
Mr. HouAifD. I was certain then and I — in that statement I believe that
I
Mr. Stcb:v. Well, the FBI report that 1 have said that you heard either
three or four shots fired together, and I gather the impression of the agent
was that you were uncertain whether it was three or four.
Mr. HotXANo. At the time I made that statement, of course, I was pretty
well shook up, but I told the people at the sheriff's office, whoever took the state-
ment, that I believed there was four shots, because they were so close together,
and I have also told those two, four, six Federal men that have been out there
that I definitely saw the puff of smoke and heard the report from under those
trees.
Mr. Stebit. Did you realize that these were shots then ?
Mr. Hotxazn^ Yes ; I think I realized what was happening out there.
Mr. SiCBK. You did?
Mr. HocxAjn>. When Governor Connolly was knocked down in the seat.
Mr. Stew. What did you then do?
Mr. HoLLAzru. Welt Immediately after the shots' was fired, I run around the
end of this overpass, behind the fence to see if I could we anyone up there
behind the fence,
Mr. Stew. That is the picket fence?
Mr. HoLLANOi That is the picket fence.
Mr. Stxbx. On the north side of £lm Street?
Mr. Hoixaxd. Of course, this was this sea of cars in there and it was just
a big-4t wasn't an inch in there that wasn’t automobiles and I couldn't see
up in that comer. I ran on up to the comer of this fence behind the build-
ing. By the time I got there there were 12 or 15 policemeo and plaiodothesmen,
and wt looked for empty shells around there for unite a while, and I left
because I bad to get back to the office. I didn't dve anyone my name. 2Co
ooe-HUdn*t anyone ask for it, and it wasn't but an hour or so until the deputy
sheriff came down to the oflice and tocfic me back up to the courthousiL
Mr. STxszr. Did he know 70a personally?
Mr. Holland. Xo, no; he had to find me and find where I was. He didn't
know mev and I don't know who told me they wanted me over at the courthouse,
so, X went back up there with him and mode out the statement, and made— made
out the statement before they found out the results on the ithots. or before that
Oswald had even shot that policeman.
533
I was making out the statement before that, so, it was inmied lately after the
motorcade had passed through there.
Mr. Stekx. 'tVTiat was your impression about the source of these noises, if
yon had one?
Mr. "Holla:?i>. Well, the Impression was that the shuts, the first two or three
shots came from the upper part of the street, now, from where I was.
Mr. Ste»:t, East on Elm?
Mr. Yes, up in here somewhere. [Indicating.] I dldn*t hare the
least Idea that it was up any higher, hut I thought the shut was coming — coming
from this crowd in here [indicatingl. That is what it sounded like to me from
where I was.
Mr. STEiur. You are indicating on this Exhibit C. Why don’t you put a square
around the area that you Just pointed to. Yon had no idea, I take it, that the
shots were coming from your area ? *
Mr. HozxaxD. No,
Mr. Stern. It is your impression that they did not, could not, as far as the
sound was concerned?
Mr. Holland. As far as the sound was concerned they did not.
Mr. Stern. Did yon see anything oh the oreipass that seemed to you any way
unusual?
Mr. Holland. Oh, no; no.
Mr. Steen. All right. Off the record.
(Off the record.)
Mr. Stern. Back on the record. Now, Mr. Holland, I’m showing you a copy
of an affidavit which I am marking as Exhibit D. That is the affidavit you made
that you described a few moments ago?
Mr. Holland. That’s right.
Mr. Stern. Would you read that
Mr. Holland. ’*X am signal supervisor for the Union Terminal, and I was
Inspecting signal and switches and stopped to watch the parade. I was stand-
ing on the top of the triple underpass and the President’s car was coming down
Efim Street, and when they got Just about to the arcade, X heard what 1 thought
for a moment was a firecracker and he slumped over and I looked over toward
the arcade and trees and saw a puff of smoke come from tbo trees and I heard
three more shots after the first shot but that was the only puff of smoke 1 saw.
X immediately ran around to where X could see behind the arcade and did not see
anyone running from there. But the puff of smoke I saw definitely came from
behind the arcade to the trees. After the first shot the President slomped over
and Mrs. Kennedy Jumped up and tried to get over In the back seat to him and
then the second shot rang out. After the first shot the Secret Sorice man
raised up in the seat with a machine gun and then dropped back down In the
seat And they Immediately sped off. Everything is s])inning In my bead ami
if I remember anything else later I will come back and tell BllL’*
That is Mr. X3ecker. And*-brother it was, too.
Mr, Stern. Tm sure it was,
Mr. Holland. Stand there and watch two Or three men get killed—
Mr. Stern. Now, that statement makes clear that you beard four shots,
thought you heard four sbota at that time?
Mr. Holland. Tes.
Mr. Stern. AU ri^t
Mr. Holland. But two of them was rather dose together, though.
Mr. Stern. So close do you think that ml^t have been one shot?
Mr. Holland. No, it waa four.
Mr. Stern. You are clear there were fOur?
Mr. Holland. No ; It was different sounds, different repoita.
' Mr. Stern. All right Mr. Morrison, are there any quesrions you woold like
to ask Mr. Holland to darify any points that we dUens^?
Mr. Morrison. Mr^HoUand, is there anything you might add to this?
Mr. Holland, \7ell, the only thing that X remember now that X didn’t then.
I remember .^bout the thinl car down from this fence, there was a Atacioa wagon
hacked up toward the fence, about the third car down, and a td j»ay 3
Coot by 2 foot looked to me' like somebody had b^n standing there fisc a
534
period. I gness If you could count them about a hundred foottrad&s in that
little spot, and also mud up on the bumper of that station wason.
Mr. Stsut. This was a car back — parked behind the picket fence? Well,
why don’t you put the Xumber approximately where that car would hare
been.
Mr. Holland. If we could call this the arcade [ indicating]
Mr. ^TEXSt, All right
Mr. HOLL.VND. And one, two, three, I think it would have been Just about
here [Indicating].
Mr. Srnuf. AU right
Mr. Monisozf. That is £lm Street It would be behind the fence, wouldn’t it?
Mr. Holland. Well, I have got the fence running up here, and this ear would
be back In there [indicating). This Is the trees ont here; which wonld--and
that is appro3dmately the same location as — the car and the trees that 1 saw
the smoke would probably be the some location.
Mr. Stcbn. AU right And this was a station wagon?
Mr. Holland. Now, the reason I didn’t think so much about that at the time,
was because there was so many people out there, and there was law enforcement
officers and I thought well. If there is anything to that they would pick that up,
or notice it but it looks like someone had been standing there for a long time,
because It was muddy.
Mr. Stckn. Tracks you saw In the mud?
Mr. Holland. It was muddy, and you could hare if you could have counted
them, I Imagine it would have been a hundred tracks just in that one locathm.
It was Just
Mr. Stern. And then you saw some mud on the bumper?
Mr. Holland. Mud on the bumper In two spots.
Mr. Stern. As If someone had cleaned his foot or
Mr. Holland. Well, as If someone bad cleaned their foot or stood up on the
bumper to see over the fence.
Mr. Stern. 1 see.
Mr. H(HXAxrD. Because, you couldn’t very well see over it standing down In
the mud, or standing on the ground, and to get a better view you could
Mr. Stern. Was there anythlug else you noticed about this station wagon?
Mr. Holland. No.
Mr: Strbn. Do you recall the - —
Mr. Holland. They searched all the cars in that location.
Hr. Stern. Did this occur to you
Mr. Holland. It occurred to me. Immediately when I saw It there; yea,
Mr. Stern. And you thought about it later in the day?
Mr. Holland. I thought about It that nl^t.
Mr. Stern. I see
Mr. Holland. In fact, I went to bed — ^it was about a week there I couldn’t
sleep, much, brother, and I thought about it that night, and I have thought about
it a lot of times since then.
Mr. Stern. Did you ever go back to look at that site or look at the station
wagon?
Mr. Holland^ No; I didn’t go bade that Hfternoon, bmose I spent the rest
of the day in the county Jail office over there, but a number of your Federal
Agents went out there then and Secret Service men. It wms Just a hediive.
Mr. SXRBN. Tm.
Mr. Holland. In a matter of a few minutes.
Hr. Stern. Did you tell any of the Federal officers, or any of the Dallas Police
oflieets about it?
Hr. Bollandl I don’t think I did.
Hr. Strin. So, this Is really the first time— \
Mr. Holland. This is the first time that I bars discussed it, that I remember. ^
Now, I might have told In our conversation. I don’t remember that, but I don’t
thinkldld.
Mr. Stern. I am not aware of any other oceaslmi in which you did.
Mr. Morrison. You thou^t the officers there would take care of that?
Me. Holland. I thought that, the officers would take care ot it because there
535
were so many there, I thought they would take care of everything, and a layman
didn't have any business up there, and I went on back to my office.
Mr. Stebx. When you ran behind the picket fence after the shots were fired,
did yon come near the area where the station wagon was parked?
Mr. Holland. Went up to behind the arcade as far as you could go.
Mr. SiEBn. So, you would have passed where this station wagon was?
Mr. Hoixaira Xes.
Mr. STKB 2 f. Or, that area?
Mr. Hollaud. Xes; immediately, but 1 turned around, see, and went to
searching in there for empty shells, and three or four agents there then and that
is when I walked back to the car there and noticed the tracks there in one little
spot.
Mr. Stzrn. When you first came around, that was quite soon after the shots
were fired?
Mr. HoLX.aNa Xes.
Mr. Stebit. And did you notice anything about this station wagon?
Mr. HoLLAi^n. 1 was in front of the cars, then 1 went in front of the cars.
Mr. Stcbit. In front of the cars- —
Mr. HoLLa:n). The cars they were parked pretty close to the fence, and I came
Qp in front of the cars and got over to the fence and then walked back down
looking around, Jnst like the rest of them.
Mr. Stebn. And that was later yon came behind the station wagon?
Mr. HoLLAifD. Oh, maybe 3 or 4 minutes after I got up there, and 3 or 4 minutes
after I got np to the end of the fence.
Mr. StEBN. This number of cars, this is an area in which cars are regularly
parked?
Mr. Hollakd. Xes. *
Mr. Stebn. a parking area for the School Book Depository?
ICr. HoLuavD. No; it is a i>arking area for the sherllTs department and people
over to the courthouse. They park in there.
Mr. Stebit. I see.
Mr. Hoxxaim. SherllTs department parka in there. District attomeys' cars
park in there. It is railroad property, but they let them park is there and save
tbat2ficents. Don't put that down. lOgbt get in trouble.
Now, do you want to know about the two policemen that were riding in that
motoreade and one of them throwed the motorcyde down right in the middle
of the street and mn up towards that location with his gun in his hand.
Mr. Smw. Toward
Mr. Houjiirn. The location that
Blr. Stebn. Where you saw the puff of smoke?
Mr. HotLoNo. Where I saw the puff of smoke. And another one tried to iide
up the hill on bis motorcycle and got about halfway up there and he run up the
zest of the way on loot.
Mr. Srcazv. Go ahead. This is at the time of the—
Hr. B<&LA 2 ra At the time of the
Mr. Bzon. That the shots were fixed?
Mr. HcMUUirn. The shots was fired.
Mr. Snaur. Twomotorcydepollcemen who were in the motorcade?
Mr* HotiiBiin. Xa tire motorcade, and one of them throwed his motorcycle down
rf^t in the middla of the street and ran up the incline with his pistol in his hand,
and the other motorcycle policeman jumped over the curb with his motorcycle
and tried to ride up the hiU on Ms motorcycle, and be— tipped over with him
opthtse,aodheTaiiup there the rest of the way with hia
Me. tacuf. Did yon see anything farther involving those two?
Mr. Hbsxaim. No ; 1 ran around, I was going around the comer of tiie fence.
Hr. Stebn. When they were coming up the incline?
Mr. Bocxjnd. When that happened.
Bfr. Steen. Bat,notblng further came of that, that you obcerred?
Mr. BdUANo. No.
Bln Stebn. Did yoa talk to them?
BIr. HwJLNn. No.
Mr. Stebn. Anything dee occur to you?
536
Mr. Holland. No ; that Is about all of It. If 1 have been of any help, I am
tickled.
Mr. Stebn’. You certainly have. I appreciate very much your comiag here
today. Our reporter, Mr. Holland, will transcribe your testimony, and you then
have the opportunity of reviewing it and signing it, or if you prefer, you can
waive your signature and she will send it directly to the Commission. Either
one, it is entirely up to you, whichever you prefer.
Mr. Mohrison. I prefer that he read It and sign it.
Mr. Stcbn. Fine. Then the reporter will get In touch with you os soon as his
transcript la ready to rea<L
Mr. Mosbison. 1 would like to say — now, you will cooperate with the author-
ities in any way?
Mr. Holland. I surely wUL
Mr. Mobrison. To clear this up?
3Ir. Holland. 1 sure wllL
Mr. Mobbison. And you and have — ^you and I have been dose personal friends
for over 10 years, haven't we?
Mr. Holland. That's right
Mr. Mobbison. And you wanted me to come down here because you thought
you would be nervous, and if I were with you maybe you would be less nervous?
Mr. Holland. That's correct because I was real nervous when I went over to
that sheriff's office that afternoon.
Mr. Mobbison. I believe that is alL
Mr. Stebn. Thank you.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Holland was standing on top of the overpass
above Elm Street, looking down on Elm Street. Mr. Holland indi-
cated that he had heard four shots. After the first, he said he saw
Governor Connally turn around. Then there was another report.
The first two sounded like they came from the upper part of the
street. The third was not as loud as the others. He said: ''There was
a shot, a report, I don’t know whether it was a shot. I can’t say
that. And a puff of smoke came out about 6 or 8 feet above the
ground right out from under those trees. And at just about this
location from where I was standing you could see that puff of
smoke, like someone had thrown a firecracker or something out,
and that is just about the way it sounded. It wasn’t as loud as the
previous reports or shots.”
When Commission Counsel Stern asked Mr. Holland if he had
any doubts about the four shots, he said: "I have no doubt about it.
I have no doubt about seeing that puff of smoke come out from
those trees either.”
Later in his testimony, Mr. Holland commented on the activity
after the shooting. He said:
Now, do you want to know about the two policemen that were riding in that
motorcade and one of them throw'ed the motorcycle down right in the middle of the
street and run up toward that location with his gun in his hand.
Mr. Stern, Toward
Mr, Holland. The location that
Mr. Stern. Where you saw the puff of smoke?
Mr. Holland. Where I saw the puff of smoke. And another one tried to ride up
the hill on his motorcycle and got about halfway up there and he run up the rest of
the way on foot.
In addition to testimony relating to the direction of the shots,
several witnesses also reported seeing bullets strike at various
points in the plaza. For example, two witnesses said they saw
bullets hit the pavement on Elm Street. I would like to enter into
the record JFK exhibit F-649.
537
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[The information follows:]
V01.UKrAAX 4TA7ZMZKT. K«« U«4«r
snnccrij’c onPAniriJaLiK-s:
C05JKTY OZ? D.-liLAJj, rr'JlAS
Bciort me. tK* unJctil^ncd euthoriqr. on tbli iK« ..
. dtj of -
Novenber
, AJJro*. 7.'SP.0
•I
> .
pcoooifl/eppeeted- __
L& 1 2745 Bus. address 215 Union terninal Ri 1 1396
Agr .. 3'8 " . Phone ■ ■ - ■ ■
Dipoiii endmyM- ^ Standing on top of the train trestle
where it crosses Eln Street with Austin Miller, tfe saw
the votorcade cone around the corner and I heard something
which 1 thought was fireworks. 1 saw something hit the *
pavement at the left rear of the car, then the car got in ^
the right hand lane and I heard two more shots. 1 head a
woman sa **0h no** or something and grab a man inside the
car. 1 then heard another shot and saw the bullet hit the
pavement. The concrete %ras knocked to the South away from
the car* fxhx It hit the pavement in the left or middle lane.
I then went down to my car radio to see if I could find out
what happened. After I cane back up, a policeman askedne
if I had seen anything and brought me to the Sheriff's Office,
N
s
Sttbsoibed ind fweni tebcfocc im oa thU the .
A.ai9.
Mmmt Pbbll^ DbUm epunrr. Ta
Bsoxsa Etbzbit Na 6233— Cootinaed
JFK Exhibit F-649
538
Mr. Blakey. It is a statement by Royce Skelton made to the
sheriffs department on November 22, 1963. Mr. Skelton related:
I was standing on top of the train trestle where it crosses Elm Street with Austin
Miller * * * I heard something which I thought was fireworks. I saw something hit
the pavement at the left rear of the car, then the car got in the right hand lane and
I heard two more shots * * ’ I then heard another shot and saw the bullet hit the
pavement. The concrete was knocked to the South away from the car. It hit the
pavement in the left or middle lane.
Mr. Skelton also testified before the Warren Commission. Mr.
Chairman, I would like to enter that testimony into the record as
JFK exhibit F-650.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[The information follows:]
539
JFK Exhibit F-650
TESTIMONY OF ROYCE G. SKELTON
The testim<my ot Royce G. Skeltxm was taken at 2 ;45 pjn., on April 8, 1064,
in the oflSce ot T7.S. attorney, 301 Post Office Building, Bryan and Erray Streets,
Dallas, Tex^ by Mr. Joseph A. Ball, assistant counsel of the President's
Commission.
Mr. Ball. Will you raise your right hand and be sworn?
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give before the
Commission will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
iilr. Selcltoiv. I da
Mr. Bazx. Will you state your name, please, for the record?
Mr. Skcltoit. Boyce G. Skelton.
Mr. Ball. What is your business?
Mr. Sksltox. I am a mall dork at the Texas Louisiana Freight Bureau*
Mr. Ball. Where 'do you work?
Mr. Skelxozt. At the Texas Louisland Freight Bureau.
Mt.Ball. Where were you bom and where did you come from?
Mr. SKgLTOir. 1 was bom in Henrietta, Tex.» May 25, 1640.
Mr. Baix. And where did you go to sdmol?
Mr. SKEtioir. I attended all grade schools in Wichita Falls and I graduated
from Wichita Fails High ScbooL
Mr. Ball. Tell me where yon went to schooL
Mr. SsxLiox. Wichita Fails throogh hl^ schod and I attended 1 year at
Midwestern Dniverdty.
Mt.Ball. And when did you go to work for the railroad?
Mr. Skxltox. February L 1063.
Mr. Ball. What kind of work do you do?
Mr. Skcltox. Mail clerk.
Mr. Ball. On NoTtmher 22, 1063, did you watch the parade, the motorcade
of the President?
Mr. Skslton. Yes, sir; I went to the triple OTerpass about 12:20—1 think It
was 12:15. or something like that.
Mr. Baxx* Whom did you go down there with?
Mr. SxxLrov. Ansthi Milter and myself.
Mr. Bail. Where does he woiic?
Mr.Sntiox. Helsaanllderkalsoiatheflsittecompaay.
Mt.Baxl. Where did you stand to watch the parade?
Mr*SxxL3K»r. Well, we were direetty over Him Street
Mr. Ball. Directly orer BIm?
Mr. SxELTcnr. Maybe It would be to the left-hand side, if you were on the
s treet
Mr. Ball. Anybody dse tibere on the overpass?
Mr. SxzLTox. There were quite a few people op there.
Mr. Ball. Did you know any of them?
Mr. Skeltox. Well. I know by sight — I knew the electrician, au old umn that’s
an eieetrician.
Mr. Ball. Frank Bcilly?
Mr. Skeltox. Is that bis name?
Mr. Ball. The man that was here a moment ago— his name is BelUy.
Mr. Sksltox. 1 know him wbea I sm him.
Mr. Ball. Tea
Mr. Skelton. And Austin Miller, of course.
Mr. Ball. Did yon know Dodd, the miployee of the railroad?
Mr. SxxLTON. No, sir; like I say, I recognized them off and on when I see
them around there.
^fr. Ball. Did yon see any police officers there?
Mr. Skelton. Yes ; this man right here — they say it was him — I don't recall
whether it was or not.
Mr, Ball. Who — Mr. Brow'n?
Mr. Skelton. The one who was in here Just a while ago— they say he was the
one up there, but I don’t know.
Mr. Ball. You didn’t recognize him there?
Mr. Skelton. No ; X didn't recognize him.
Mr. Ball. In other w-ords, you saw some police officers up the*e?
Mr. Skelton. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ball. Where were they st.anding?
Mr. Skelton. There was one standing directly behind me, I think, or in the
general vicinity, and there was one on the far side of the triple uiidertxiss.
BIr. Ball. By “far side,” you mean where?
Mr. Skelton. It would be back on this side.
Mr. Ball. It would be south?
Mr. Skelton. No, sir ; that would be the east side — isn’t it?
Mr. Ball. Elm runs east and west.
Mr. Skelton. It would be the west aide.
Mr. Ball. It would he west?
Mr. Skelton. Yes, sir ; and then there was one back over here on Stemmons—
1 noticed one, at least, over there and one on the railroad overpass on Stemmona.
Mr. Ball. How many police ofBcers were on this overpags, the railroad over*
pass?
Mr. SxELTONi Two, I wonld say, sir. That’s an I saw.
Mr. Ball. And how many men did you see standing right near on the railroad
overpass over Elm, Just api>roxlniately?
Mr. Skelton. Eight, including the officer^ight or nine.
Mr. Did you see the President’s ^r tnm on Elm Street?
Mr, Skelton. Yes, sir; I saw the car carrying the Presidential flag tnm.
Mr. Baix^ And did yon hear something soon after that?
Mr. Skelton. Just about the same time the car straightened up*-got around .
the comer— 'I heard two shots, but 1 didn’t know at that tint they were shots.
Mr. Ball. Where did they seem to comerfrom?
Mr. Skelton. W^ I couldn’t t^l then, they were still so fhr from where I was.
Mr. Ball. Did the shots sound like they came ftom where yon were standing?
Mr. Skelton. No, sir; definitely not It sounded like they were right there—
more or less like motorcycle backfire; hut I thought that th^ were these dranh-
halls that they throw at the cement because I could see Urn smoke coming up
off the cement
Mr. You saw some smoke emne off of tim cement?
Mr. Skixton. Yea.
Mr. Where did it seem to yon that the sound came trora^ what direction?
Mr. Skelton. Towards the President’s car.
Mr. Ball From the PrestdenPs ear?
Mr. Skelton. Right around the motorcycles and all that— I couldn’t dis*
tinguish because It was too far away.
Mr. Ball. How Tong did you stand there?
Mr. Skelton. I stood there from about 12:13 until the time the President was
shot
Mr. Ball. How many shob did you hear? v
Mr. Skelton. I thluk I heard four — ^I mean — couldn't bo sure. ^
Mr. Ball. You think you heard four?
Mr. Skelton. Yes.
Blr. Ball. How loug did you stay there after you heard the fourth shot?
Mr. Skelton. Not very long— Just as soon as the cars sped awny and every-
thing was in a big couimotlon— we ran down to listen to the radio. We couldift
get anything off of that— we heard that the President had been shot and so we
went bade up there and the pdlce ofllcer asked us if we had seen the assassina-
tion and wo tdd him wo had. He said he would like to get a statement from
ns, so ho todc us om to the sheriff’s office.
Mr. Bail. Did you see any pigeons fiying or anything like that?
Mr. SnuroN. No, sir; I didn’t see anything Uke that— any pigeons at alL
Mr. Ball. I think that’s all 1 have. This will bo written np and submitted to
yon for your signature, if you want to sign It, or you ca n waive yo u r signature.
541
Wbich do you want to do?
Mr. Sko*tok. I will waive my signature. I am sure It U all rlscht.
Mr. Baix. Tbat Is flue. Thank you very much.
Mr. SicgLTON. There's one thing 1 could say — you bare tbat other report?
Mr. Ball. What is that?
Mr. Skelton. About when 1 saw one of the bullets where It hit on the pare-
meat and it hit, the smoke did come from the general vicinity of where you say
Oswald was.
Mr. Ball. Wait a minute — let me ask you some questions about that.
Tell me, now, about the smoke— ^id you see some smoke?
Mr. Skelton. After those two shots, and the car came on down closer to the
triple underpass, well, there was another shot — two more shots I heard, but
one of them — 1 saw a bullet, or I guess it was a bullet — 1 take for granted
it was — hit in the left front of the President's car on the cement, and when
it did, the smoke carried with it — away from the building.
Mr. You mean there %vas some smoke iu the building?
Mr. Skelton. No ; on the pavement — you know, pavement when it is hit with
a hard object it will scatter — ^it will spread.
Mr. Ball Which way did it spread?
Mr. Skelton. It spread just right in line, like yon said.
Mr, Ball I haven't sold anything— ted me what you think It was?
Mr. Skelton. Like 1 said— south of u»— it would he southwest, you know, in
a direct line from the Texas Depository.
Mr. Ball I see. In other words, the spray seemed to go to the west; is that
right?
Mr. Skelton. Yes.
Mr. Ball All right. Thanks very much.
I’m going to get you to mark one of these maps and show where you were
standing. Here is Elm and here is the railroad underpass and pay no attention
to the diagrams, but show me about where you were standing.
Mr. Skelton. I was about right there (marked instnunm referred to as
requested by. Counsrt Ball). . .
Mr. By that we will put the word ^Sk^toa** and that is where
you were standing with your friend?
Mr. Skelton. Approximately— yes.
Mr. Now, did you see any smoke or anything from any place around
tiiere?
Mr. Skelton. No, sir; I just stated to your secretary tbat I heard people
say they dtd, but I didn’t.
Mr. But you did see something light on the street?
Mr. Sncxos. Tea, sir.
Mr. Bail About where?
Mr. Skelton. A bullet— let's see— this is kind of out of proportion [referring
to diagram], and I would say the buUet hit about right here [indicating on
diagram].
Mr. Ball Then, let's mark that as *^keiton (2)’* and «e will make the first
Skelton number (1) and then Skelton number <2), nuil this -‘X’* mark here
is where you saw the bullet, and which way dUl the spray go?
Mr. Skelton. Just like it was going there.
Mr. B.UL Mark an arrow showing the direction tlmt you think the spray
was going.
Mr. Skelton. (Marks the diagram with arrow.)
Mr. Ball That's fine, and we will make that ua an exhibit, Skelton Exhibit
and attach It to your deposition.
(Instrument mariced by the reporter as “Skelton Exhibit A," for ideutiflca-
tion.)
Mr. Ball Thank you and that is oil.
Mr. Skelton. Thank you.
n - 7n - a?,
542
Mr. Blakey. On that occasion, Mr. Skelton said that he saw
smoke rise from the pavement where the bullet hit and that he
thought the gunfire had come from the area of the presidential
limousine.
* * * I saw a bullet, or I guess it was a bullet — I take for granted it was — hit in
the left front of the President’s car on the cement, and when it did, the smoke
carried with it — away from the building.
Later he said that the smoke “would be southwest, you know, in
a direct line from the Texas Depository.'’
Another witness to see a bullet was Ms. Virgie Baker. It would
be appropriate to enter into the record JFK exhibit F-651, Ms.
Baker's statement to the FBI, dated November 24, 1963.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record at this point.
[The information follows:]
JFK Exhibit F-651
FEDERAL BUREAU 0*^ INVEST SiiATlOrv
1
11/25/63
VXBGIS RACXLHY, 405 Wood Street, telephone
544-3827, eaployed ns a bookkeeper at the Texas School
Book Depository, second floor, corner of Houston and
Elm Streets, Dallats, Texas, furnished the following
Information:
From an examination of the photograph of
UL^JiVST OSWALD, she does not believe that she has ever
seen him and is certain that she has never spoken to him.
iSho works on the second floor at the front of the building
»nd rides to work on an elevator located In the east
end of the building which goes only to the first four
floors .
At about 12:15 p.a. on Hoveaber 22, 1963 she
left her office and went out the south door of the Texas
School Book Depository Building to watch the Presidential
Botorcade pass. She was standing across the street
iaoedlately In front of this building but on the north
side of the entrance to the Trlp^'^ Underpass along
which the aotorcade traveled. She observed President
KEMNEDT's car pass her point of observation and almost
lamedlately thereafter heard three explosions spaced at
Intervals which she at first thought were firecrackers.
It sounded as though these sounds were coming from the
direction of the Triple, Underpass, and looking In that
direction after the first shot she saw something bounce
from the roadway In frcmt of the presidential automcRille
and now presumes It was a bullet bouncing off the pavement.
She stated she did not see president KEHH5DT being shot
and that she did not realize this was what happened until
later.
After the shots she and others In the crowd
moved on down toward the Triple Underpass and on returning
to the building were told they could not go inside. She
did not go Inside until about 3:00 p.m.
She stated that Just before the shooting a man
had passed out on the parkway between the Elm Street
entrance and the uain Street entrance to the Triple
Underpass and that an ambulance bad picked him up and
•« 11/24/63 .. Ferris, Texts ^ DL 89-43
BABDWBLL D. ODUM U
by Sf •ci«l JOSEPH. G^ PEGGS/sah 11/24/63
I ^
544
2
OL 89-43
laXt tbe scene Just seconds before the presidential car
came into sight on Houston Street.
This aabulance picked up the nan directly
jicross Houston Street from, the Sheriff's Office.
RACKLEY Stated that she did not look up at
the Texas School Book Depository Building since she
did not think that the sounds were coming from that
building. She recalled no one who had mentioned seeing
anyone in the windows of the building prior to the
shooting although Just after the shooting some unidentified
man who had been sitting on a wall directly across the
street and south of the Texas School Book Depository 'n.
Building stated ”X saw everything**. She did not know
what he was talking about at the tine and does not know
whether he saw anyone in the windows of the building
or not.
She recalled that after the second shot she
smelled gunsmoke but did not know where it was coning
from.
Mr. Blakey. Ms. Baker was standing across the street from the
Texas School Book Depository when she heard the shots. She
thought they came from the direction of the triple overpass.
When she looked that way, she saw what she presumed to be a
bullet bouncing off the pavement.
Mr. Chairman, I would also like to enter into the record JFK
exhibit F-652, Ms. Baker’s testimony before the Warren Commis-
sion.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it is so ordered.
[The information follows:]
545
JFK Exhibit F-652
TESrriMONY OF MBS. DONALD BAKER
The testimony of Mrs. Donald Baker was taken at 11:50 o-m,, on July 22.
lOW, In the office of the U.S. attorney. 301 Post Office Building, Bryan and Erray
Streets. Dallas, Te3L, by Mr. Wesley J. Llebeler, assistant counsel of the Presi-
dent’s Commission.
Mr. DiEBCLEa. Before you alt down, will you raise your right hand and please
take the oath? Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to
glre will be the trut^ the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you
God?
Mrs. Baker. I do.
Mr. Lzebexeb. Mrs. Baker, my name is Wesley J, Llebeler. I am an attorney
on the staff of the President's Commission luTeatlgatlng the assassination of
President Kennedy. I have been authorized to take your testimony by the
Commission, pursuant to authority granted to it by Executive Order 11130,
dated November 29, 1063, and the joint resolution of Congress No. 137. Under
the rules of the Commission, you are entitled to have an attorney present
and you are entitled to 3 days’ notice of the hearing. Ton don’t have to
answer any questions that you think would violate any of .vour constitutional
rights. I presume from the nature of the testimony that we are going to ask
you about that you don’t want your attorney present and that you are willing to
proceed with the testimony at this point; is that correct?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes, sir.
Mr. Liebeler. Would you state your full name for the record, please?
Mrs. Baker. Mrs. Donald Baker.
Mr. T.TCTigt.int. Have you been married since the 22d of November 1963?
Mrs. Baker. February 1, 1963.
Mr. LTragT.FR. Yon were married on February 1, 1963?
Mrs. Baker. Yes, sir.
Mr. Liebeler. Are you Vlrgie Bacbley or Is that somebody else?
Mrs. Baker. That's me.
Mr. Liebeler. How come I hare your name as Vlrgie Bachley and also Mrs.
Donald S. Baker?
Mrs. Baker. I don't know.
Mr. Liebeler. Well, I have a report from the FBI that U dated November 24,
1D63, and they refer to r^u as Ylr^e Itacbley In that report, but you had already
been married at that time; is that correct?
Mrs. Baker. I married this year.
Mr. Lieseler. Oh, February of 1064?
Mrs. Baker. This Is 1964— I'm sorry. ^
Mr. LiEBEtXB. That’s right. Now, we^ve got it. You were Tlzgie Bachley on
November 24, 1963, and you were married In February 1964.
Mrs. Baker.* Tea ; that's right.
Mr. LiEBETjaL 1 understand that you were employed at the time of the at-
ttsslnatlon as a bookkeeper at the Texas School Book Depository ; is that correct?
Mrs. Baker. Yes.
Mr. Liebeler. How long had yon worked there?
Mrs. Baker. Well, 1 have been there since July 16; 1963.
Mr. Ltbreter. Last year?
^Irs. Baker. Yes,
Mr. Liebeler. Did you ever meet Lee Harvey Oswald or have oecaston to see
bid while yon were employed at the Texas School Book Depository?
Mrs. Baker. I had seen him.
Mr. Lieseleb. Ton had seen him?
^Irs. Baker. Yea.
Mr. Lie BET m. Had you ever said anything to him or talked to him at all?
Mrs. Baker. No, sir.
Mr. Liebeler. Did you form any impression of him just from seeing him around
‘be building?
Mrs. Baker. Jnst that he was awful quiet.
546
Mr. T.TEH CTjjt- Otbcr than that, did 70 a farm any Impression of hirt^ at aii;
Mrs. Bakvl No, sir.
Mr. T^nm ri-TB- Xell me what happened on the 22d of November in connection
with the motorcade, would you please, what you saw and what you did? ^
Mrs. Bakcb. we came out of the building across the street at approx}-
mately 12 or 12 :15 we stood out in front, directly In front of the Dep^toiy
Building and as the motorcade came by the President wared and he got down-— »
Mr. T.TTOgTTO. Where were you standing at this point, at the time the motor-
cade came along? •
Mrs. Baksb. Well, there Is a divisional line — I don’t know exactly what yon
would call it — the little part of the street that runs In front of the Depository
and then there Is— I don’t know what you would can It — the grassy stuif that
comes out to form the plaza along the front.
Mr. Titti«r.ga. Ton say there is a little street that runs immediately in front of
the School Book DepoMtory Building; Is that right?
Mrs. Basks. Yes.
Mr. TjtCBgrxs. Do yon know. If that street has a name or not?
Mrs. Bases, rmsnre it doesn’t^I have never seen one.
Mr. XiiEBBLEB. And then after that little street that runs right in front of
the Depository Building, there is a little strip of grass with some trees on it; is
that correct?
Mrs. Basd. Yes. ‘
Mr. T>Trarfjgi»- And then comes Elm Street ; is that right?
Mrs. Bases. Yes.
Mr, Ltntgjea. And on the other side of Elm Street there is a sort of a
triangular plot of grass.
Mrs. Bases. I guess you could say we were standing just at the edge of Eha
Street at the side of the Depository because we were out almost in the street—
Elm Street.
Mr. IjTOKtxb. Elm- Street is separated from another street that runs down
throus^ the trii^e underpass. Do you know the name of that street that runs
ri^t down here — I am showing you Commission Exhibit No. 354, an aerial
view of the street that runs by and three streets converge and go under the
railroad tracks and that’s the triple underpass.
Mrx Bakes. I think that goes out to Stemmons Expressway or leads into
Stemmou Expressway.
Mr. TdESEiKS. The street that runs right down through here; the middle^ la
that Main Street?
Mrs. Bakes. That would be Main Street and this one would be Commerce.
Mr. Ltebstjcs. Now, con you point to me approximately wtm you wen
standing?
Mrs. Bakes. Let me dud the building here-4t would be right here— we were
standing ri^t at the edge, apiKozimately directly in front of the buildisg or
at the edge of the building ; we were standing right here^
Mr. TiTEBETjns. So, you wm standing directly in frtmt of the Texas Sdiool
Book Depository Building and on the same side of Elm Street that the Texas
School Book Depository Is located?
Mru Bakes. Yes.
Mr. Tinmsrxs. Tell me what you saw?
Mrs. Bakes. after he passed us, then we heard a noise and I thought
it was firecrackers, because I saw a shot or something hit the pavemaiC.
Mr. LTTBftjm. And you heard that immediately after the first notes; is chat
right?
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. LTESstEs. Gould you tell or did you have any idea where the sofee caaie
from when you first heard it?
Mrs. Bakzx. No ; I thought there were some boys standing down there where
ha was— where the President’s car was.
Mr. litcsELZs. Down farther on Xhe street, you mean?
^<73. Bakes. Yes ; dose to the underpass.
547
Mr. Liebeleb. Had the President's car already passed you at the time you
beard the first noise?
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. T.TrttTOra. Con you tell me approximately how far down the street it had
^ne when you beard the flr^ shot ?
Mrs. Bakes. I don’t know exactly — I could still see the back of the car — I
can’t judffe distance so I really couldn’t tell you.
Mr.LxEBXisB. It hadn’t gone out of sight in your opinion?
Mrs. Bakes. No, sir.
Mr. T<TKBEt.iai. Could you still see the President?
Mrs. Bakou Not too weU.
Mr. LiEBttiXK. There Is a gradual curve on Elm Street and the car had al-
ready started slightly into the curve by the time it had gone by you?
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. Liebeucb. You say you saw something hit the street after you heard the
first shot ; is that right?
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. Biebcleb. Where did you see it hit the street?
Mrs. Bakes. Have you got that — can you see the signs on that picture there?
^Ir. Liebeles. Well, you can’t see the signs too well on that picture, which is
Commission Exhibit No. 354, but I will show you some other pictures here
on which the signs do appear. First of all, let me show you Hudson Exhibit
Xa 1 on which appears a sign that says, “Stemmona Freeway, Keep Bight”
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. TiTFBTTJa. Could you see that sign?
Mrs. Bakes. No.
Mr. T.moerjgB- The Stemmous Freeway sign from where you were standing?
Mrs. Bakes. No ; I couldn’t see the sign because I was an^ed — we were step-
ping out in the street then and it was approximately along in here, I presume,
the first sign — I don’t know which one it 1% but I saw the bullet hit on down
this way, I gness, right at the sign, angling out
Mr. r.TEngrjEn- You think the bullet hit the street only it was farther out la
the street?
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. Even though you couldn’t see the sign, you could see this thing
hit the street near the sign?
Mrs. Baxzx. Yes, sir.
Mr. T.TffftCTxat- It appears to me from looking at Commission Exhibit No. 354,
that you can in fact make out where the signs are located along the side of the
road and let’s see If these do look like the signs. Now, as you come down Elm
Street past the place you were standing going toward the triple imderpass, there
is a tree here on this little grassy triangular spot that is on the side of Elm
Street toward the Texas School Book Eeporitory Building, right on Dealer
Plan here by this concrete structure. Then, after the tree, going on down
toward the triple underpass, it appears in the aerial photograph-^ spot that
looks like a sign or a shadow— -It looks like a sign to m&
Mrs. Baxdl There Is a sign there.
Mr. Tiramm. And then there’s another sign farther on down there.
Mrs. Bakes. This was a big sign here and tbm was a small one here.
Mr. And yon think that it was approximately near the first sign?
Mrs. Bakes. As I can rem«aaber, it was.
Mr. T.ffgwTjrn_ As yon went down Elm Street that yon saw this thing hit the
street — what did it look like when you saw It?
Mrs. Bakes. Well, as I said, I thought it was a firecracker. It looked just
like you could see. the sparks from It and I just thought it was a firecracker
and I was thinking that there was somebody was fixing to get in a lot
trouble and we thought the kids or whoever threw It were down below or
standing near the underpass or back up here by the sigm
Mr. Ltebeleb- Would they 'have been os far down as the underpass or some-
where near the sign to have thrown a firecracker In the street?
Mrs. Bakes, It was near the signs.
Mr. LTrBFT.irm. How dost to the curb on Elm Street was this tiling yon saw
548
hit; do you remember? It would bare been on the curb side— near the crbh
side away from the Texas Scho<^ Book Depository Building on the opposite
side of the street ; is that right?
Mrs. BAmu Tes.
Mr. Lteboxb. How close to the opposite curb do yon think it was? ~
Mrs. Bajceb. It was approximately In the middle of the lane— I couldn't
quite sure, but I thought it was In the middle or somewhere along in then.:.^X
could eren be wrong about that but I could hare sworn it that day.
Mr. laxBCLSB. You thought it was sort of toward the middle of the lane? t
M rs. Bascb. Toward the middle of the lan& ‘
Mr. Liedexxb. Of the left-hand lane going toward the und^paas; is tliat
correct? * -
Mrs. Bases. Tea. .
Mr. Liebkleb. Where was the thing that yon saw hit the street in rHstion
to the President's car? I mean, was it in front of the car, behind his car. by
the side of his car or was it close to the car? .
Mrs. Bakes. I thought It was — ^weU— behind It ^
Mr. PTgMTt-ira- Had the car already gone by when you saw this thing hit In
the street?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes. ^
Mr. T.tfbf.tes. Do yon remember whether it hit toward the left-hand side
or the right-hand side of the President's car. or was tt just immediately behind
it? If you can't remember it that closely, all right
Mrs. Bakes. I can't remember It
Mr. LmtXES. Did you actually see the President get hit by any bullets?
Mrs. Bakes. No, sir.
Mr. Liebeles. How many shots did you hear?
Mrs. Bases. Three;
Mr. LiEBEiEKi Wh^ did you first become aware that they were shots?
Mrs. Bakes. With the second shot
Mr. Liesixeb. Did you hare any idea where they were coming from?
Mrs. Bakes. Well, the way it sounded — it sounded like it was coming from —
there was a railroad track that runs behind the building — there directly btitisd.
the building and around, so I guess It would be by the underpass, the triple
underpass, and there is a railroad track that runs back out there and there
was a train that looked like a circus train as w^ as I can remember now, back
there, and we all ran to the plaza — the little thing there I guess you call it a
plaza — back behind tbere-^-this other giri and I almost ran bade orer there
and looked and we didn't see anything.
Mr. LtEBPES . When you say the plaza, you mean Dealey Plaza, the area that
lies between Elm Street and this little street that runs by the Texas School
Bock Depository Building; Is that correct? Is that what you mean?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes. sir.
Mr. liTEBErja. After you heard the shots, you ran down the little street that
runs in front of the Scho^ Bock Depository?
Mra. Bajceb. Along the grass.
Mr. IdEBSiXL Along the grass— ^emgside there, running toward iQie triple
underpass where Elm Street goes, but you were actually running down the little '
street or alongside the street on the grass, alongside the street Umt runs right
in front of the Texas Scho<^ Book Depository?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes.
Mr. TiTEnCTJEB. And you say there are some railroad tracks back In there; is
that right?
Mrs. Baks. Tea.
Mr. I^Tgapja. Immediately behind Dealey Plaza away from Elm Street?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes.
Mr. Ltebetkb- And Is that where you thought the shots came from?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes.
Mr. Lzebeleb. And when you went down there and looked, did you see any*
body stall?
Mrs. Bakes. Just a policeman and sereral people were down there arouzKl the
tracks working.
549
Mr. Libseixb. But 70 a didn’t see anybody yon thought might have been the
assassin?
Mrs. Bakcb. No, sir.
Mr. Liebeles, Now, you haTe subsequently heard, I’m sure, and from reading
in the newspapers and one thing and another, that it appears that the shots actu-
ally came from the Texas School Book I)ei>03itory Building; is that right?
Mrs. Bakcb. Tes.
Mr. liXEBSLEB. Does that seem possible to you in view of what you heard at
the time?
Mrs. Bakxb. Well, I guess it might have been the wind, but to me it didn’t
Mr. LiKiffT.ix The sounds you beard at the time did not appear to come from
the Texas School Book Depository Building?
Mrs. Bakcb. No, sir.
Mr. Lxxbcxsb. DM you look up at the Texas School Book Depository Building
at all while you were standing there?
Mrs. Bakcb. No, sir.
Mr. LiracMCB. So, you had no occasion to see anybody In any at the windows
In that building?
Mrs. Bakes. No, sir.
Mr. Liebclcb. According to the FBI report of the interrlew that you gave
them on November 24, you said that just after the shooting some man who had
been sitting on a wall directly across the street from you came up and said he
saw everything; Is that so?
Mrs. Bakcb. Tes.
Mr. IiZcbcizb. Did you ever find out what that man’s name was?
Mrs. Bakcb. No, sir; I did not I didn’t see him after that
Mr. Lxebclcb. Did he tell you whnt he had seen?
Mrs. Bakes. No; I don’t remember — ^he came over — ^I don't know when he
cnme over now, but he told us be had seen everythlng-^t might have been later
that afternoon. I think it was — I think It was later that afternoon.
Mr. Liebcleb. Did he tell you where he had been, where be could see all this?
Mrs. Bakxs. He said he was sitting on that wait
Mr. LicacTJas. Now, when you say "that wall” I show you again Commission
Exhibit No. 854.
Mrs. Bakes. This wall here [indicating].
Mr. LiCBEtCB. Are you referring to a wall that Is <m the tziangolar spot
formed by Elm Street and Main Street and across Elm Street from the Texas
School Book Depository Building? And on Commission Exhibit No. 354; that
area has some ink marks on it around part of it?
Mrs. Bakcb. Tea.
Mr. LiEBCTJint. Did this man tell you exactly where on the wall he had been
sitting?
Bits. Bakcb. No ; I presume it was on this high waU here — it sticks up real
high — ^I presume be was up there on top.
Mr. Diraiora. Ton have indicated the part of the wall that faces toward tiis
triple underpass down toward where Elm Street and Main Street and Com-
merce all come together?
Mra. Baxzb. Tes.
Mr. Ltcsclcb. Now, there has be«i some speculation that perhaps the shots
might have come from right off the triple overpass, from the lailrDad tracks
that go up over the top, were you able to see these railroad tracks at the time
from where you were standing down here— when I say, “Down here,” I mean
the railroad tracks that actually go over Elm Street and Main Street and
Commerce.
Mrs. Bakcb. No, sir.
Mr. Lxbbelcb. Tou could not see that?
Mrs. Bakcb. No, sir.
Mr. iJCBCrcB. Did the shots soimd like they had come from that area, or
did they sound like they bad c<Hne from the area more around toward the
Texas School Book Depository Building and behind Dealey Plaza?
Mrs. Bakcb. It sounded like it was coming from along in here-4t didn’t sound
Uke it was too far off.
550
Mr, Lteseleb. It didn’t sound like it was coming, however, dIrectl7”ttT>ia^
the railroad tracks that go over Elm, Main, and Commerce; is that right?
Mrs. Baker. No, sir.
Mr. tiZEBELER. liie FBI report also indicates that after the second shot toq
began to smell gnnsmoke ; Is that correct ? ‘ -
Mrs. Baker, Yes.
Mr. tiiERfXKR. Could you tell where it was coming from ?
Mrs. Baker, No, sir.
Mr. LTKBFT.T3L Liking at Commission Exhibit No. 354, could you pick out the
place on Elm Street as the approximate place where you saw this object hit
the ground for us, and we will mark it with a i>en or pencIL Let's first of all
mark the place where you were standing, Mrs. Baker, if we can.
Mrs. Baker. Okay, after he had gone by, I got out into the street, I gueaa,
along in here tn the middle of the lanes.
Mr. Liebelo. Is that in the middle of the right*hand lane?
Mrs. Baker. Yes ; the rlght>hand lane.
Mr. Liebet.^ So, we will mark that as No. 1 and we will put a circle around*
it and Its right in front of the Texas School Book Depository Building.
Mrs. Baker. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. On Eilm Street In the right-hand lane.
Mrs. Baker. Yes.
Mr. Liebeler. And I guess that this tree was along in here somewhere?
Mrs. Baker. I couldn't be sure.
Mr. Liebeler. There appear to be two trees, one on this side of Elm Street—
this looks like a tree right here on the opposite side of Elm Street toward the
Dealey Plaza.
Mrs. Baker. That’s correct
Mr. IjESELOL And across the street — across Elm Street there appecurs to be
another tree just down from the walk
Mrs. Baker. There’s not a tree there.
Mr. Liebeler. There’s not a tree there?
Mrs. Baker. No, there’s a sign there, I think,
Mr. Liebeler, That’s a sign.
Mrs. Baker. I think so.
Mr. T.iEBKT.Tat. Can you tell us by Judging from the tree that’s in the corner
of Dealey Plaza closest towards the School Book Depository Batldlng. Ju dgi ng
from that, where the thing hit the street?
Mrs. Baker. Approximately right here — between the sign and the trea
Mr. Liebeler. Right here, would you say?
Mrs. Baker. Yes.
Mr. Ltebfxer. We have indicated the approximate area where you think it
hit and we will Indicate it by the No. 2, is that correct?
Mrs. Baker. Yes,
Mr. Lxqeler. I hare marked this photograph. Baker Exhibit No. 1, and I hare
placed my inltlab on it and would you put your initials on it Just below mine
so that we can identifjr the picture for the purposes ot our record?
Mrs, Bakes. [Compiled with request of Mr. Liebeler.]
Mr. LmiEtJER. Will you look at that picture and see If you con teU fcom it
where you were standing and if that helped you to place the spot where tlie ■
ballet hit?
Mrs Bakes, It would be back in here behind this car.
Mr. LmixER, That would have been where you were standing or where the
buUet hit?
Mrs. Baker. I r»»ally can’t tell for the tree there and ererythlng— but It
was right in here,
Mr. Liebeleb, Now, as we look at this picture this Is Baker Exhibit NOi 1.
starting from the left front, there are — ^there is a car down there and there Is
a Volkswagen panel truck in the picture and then there are two cars Imme-
diately behind the Volkswagen and then there b a convertible out — approxi-
mately In the middle of the street, isn’t that right?
Mrs. Baker, Yes.
551
Mr. XuEBEXEB* And you tbiuk yon lulgrht have been standing; somewhere behind
the spot where that convertible is located In this picture; la that right?
Mrs. Bakes. Either there or right in here.
Mr. TjIebeles. Right in back aronud the second car behind the Volkswagen?
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. Liebeles. Now, this i>lctnre actually shows the little grassy area and the
trees that lie between Elm Street and the little street that miis in front of the
Texas School Book Depository, doesn’t It?
^Irs. Bakes. Tes.
Mr. Eiebeleb. Can yon give me an estimate, looking at this picture, where
that thing might hare hit the street?
Mrs. Bakes. Tea.
Mr. DtEBELES. It may not be in this picture— I don’t know that It is.
Mrs. Bakes. I just can’t tell — I would say It was over in here somewhere in
this picture.
Mr. Liebcleb. Somewhere in about here?
Mrs. Bakes. It could have been further on up.
Mr. Liebeles. 'W'ell, \ye will mark the place “X”, but you think it might have
been right along here or somewhere farther down. Now, is there a concrete
divider somewhere here on Elm Street?
Mrs. Bakeb. Not until you pass the underpass.
Mr. I4IEBEXES. Not until you get down here towards the underpass and then
there are concrete dividers here between Elm Street and Main Street?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes.
Mr. Liebeleb. Back up here toward the intersection at Houston Street, there
is a curb on the side of Elm Street and that’s all?
Mis. Bakes. Tes, sir.
Mr. Liebeleb. In other words yon turn down from Houston Street and go
right on down Elm Street?
Mrs. Bakes. Tes.
Mr. Liebeleb. Ton saw this thing bit the street before yon heard the second
Hhot ; is that correct?
Mrs. Basel Tea* sir ; yes.
Mr. Lzebetxb. Are you absolutely sure of that ?
Mrs. Bakes. 1 hope I am — I know I am.
Mr. Liebeleb. In marking the **X” on Baker Exhibit No. 1 that we marked,
we were assuming, were we not, that the “X” was fairly near the first sign on
the right-hand .side of Elm Street going toward the triple underi»ass after the
Texas School Book Depository Building?
Mrs. Bares. I think that’s right.
Mr. Liebeleb. I think that we will find that the la— well, it is very diffi-
cult to tell the exact spot from which Baker ExhiMt No. 1 wns taken, but if
in fact we ore correct, if in fact it is taken from the side of ^loin Street toward
Commerce Street, then the would not be in the right place, would it, if this
lamppost here that appears in the picture is actually at the end of the grassy
spot made by Main Street and Elm Street, then the *’X” that we have on Baker
Exhibit Nou 1 would be too far down toward the TMple Underpass to be in the
right place where yon saw it hit, isn’t that right ; do yon follow me?
Mrs.B.vEi3L Tes.
Mr. Liebeleb. Because, if this is actually the end of this grassy spot if the
Inmppoet is actnally the end of the grassy spot here between Elm Street and Main
Street this “X” is very close to the Triple Underpass.
Mrs. Baker. Tes.
Mr. Liebeleb. And yon didn’t see the bullet bit that far down the street did
yon?
Mrs. Bakeb. No ; not that far.
ilr. Liebeleb. It would have been much closer, up towards the Texas School
Book DeiKwItory Building — uear.the first sign?
iirs. B.vkeb. This right here are the stei>s — to the plazu.
^Ir. Liebeleb. That’s right, and as a point of fact, as we look at that now,
it liecoiiies quite clear that It was taken from a spot much closer to the triple
552
underpass than we had originally thought, because in the left-hand side of the
picture you can see the steps coming down from the plaza.
Mrs. Bakes. It must have been right here in this area because these were the
steps — I can’t tell which sign is which, but I know there were four girls standing
near the sign and it must have been back up here because there must have beeu
another sign closer up.
Mr. Ijebeler. Looking at Hudson Exhibit No. which was taken at the
time of the assassination, it shows Dealey Plaza here and there are some steps
that go down over here in the very background of the picture and they go down
onto the sidewalk and it runs along past Elm Street here.
Mrs. Bakeb. This would be the first sign here. *
Mr. Liebeleb. The Stemmons Freeway sign.
Mrs. Bakeb. This one over here— the steps are already here.
Mr. Ltebet.eb. Yes ; the steps are toward the background In Hudson Exhibit
No. 1 and those appear to be the steps that are also toward the front left ot
Baker Exhibit No. 1.
Mrs. Bakeb. It was probably back over this way.
Mr. Liebeieb. Yes, so the on Baker Exhibit No. 1 is actually in the wrong
place as far as these pictures here — it is not correct — it should be further back
on up here.
Mrs. Bakeb. Yes ; definitely.
Mr. Liebeleb. So, we will put a **Y” back up here toward the School Book
Depository Building, and actually if you look at Commission Exhibit No. 351,
you can see the steps coming right down to Elm Street.
Mrs. Bakeb. Yes.
Mr. LxEBEtEB. At the end of Dealey Plaza toward the Triple Underpass, and I
think that those steps are the same steps we can see in the left front foreground
of Baker Exhibit No. 1.
Mrs. Bakeb. That’s the sign right In there — that big sign there, and I don’t
know — the sign would be here, you know.
Mr. Liebeleb. That’s right, and the sign that we see In the very left Croat
foreground of the picture would be the sign here that is toward the Triple Under-
pass from the steps to go down to Dealey Plaza on the right-hand side of Elm
Street?
Mrs. Bakeb. Yea ; this Is confusing.
Mr. Liebeleb. In any event, you are quite clear in your mind that you saw
this thing hit before you heard the second shot ?
3Irs. Bakeb. Yes.
Mr. Lxebeleb. So, If what you saw hitting the street was, in fact, a bullet U
would have been the first shot?
Mrs. Bakeb. Yes.
Mr. Liebeleb. Did you see anything else around the area of the Texas School
Book Depository Building that day that you think might have anything to do
with the assassination?
Mrs. Bakeb. I don’t know, but before the parade ever got there, someose
Ittssed out and I guess it would be to the left coming down Elm Street over in
this plaza between Elm Street and Main, because an ambulance pulled op and
picked someone up— we never could tell wbo. This was before the motoitade
ever got to Houston Street — I would say onto Elm Street
Mr. Liebeleb. About how long b^ore the motorcade came did this ambulaiK*
come and pick up this person?
Mrs. Bakeb. I’ll Judge— d minutes— about 5 minutes.
Mr. Liebeleb. The ambulance had already left the area about 5 minutes before
the Presidential motorcade came?
Mrs. Bakes. Yes.
Mr. Liebsleb. What time did you come to work that morning; do Jon
remember? ^
Mrs. Bakes. Well, it could have been 6:30 or 7, because I rode with daddy*
my daddy works behind the Depository for the Katy Railroad and if he hod
to be there at 6, then I got there at* 6. bnt that morning, I couldn’t tell you. hot
whatever time daddy had to be at work, that’s when I had to be there.
553
Mr. Liebexer. Did you see Oswald on the morning of NoTember 22 at any
time?
Mrs. Baker. Xo, sir.
Mr. litEBEEER. Do you know Billy Loveiady?
Mrs. Baker. Tes, sir.
Mr. liiEBELEB. 1 show you Commission Exhibit No. 203, and I call your atten-
tion to a man standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository
Building?
Mrs. Baker. Tes.
Mr. Lxebeler. Do you recognize him?
Mrs. Baker. That looks like Billy.
Mr. LzebeleRi. That looks like Billy Loveiady?
Mrs. Baker. Tes.
Mr. Ltereler. And that man you pointed to is immediately as we face the
picture to the right of the mark **A*' In the picture?
Mrs. Baker. Tes.
Mr. TiiEnFT.EB. And is standing directly against the side of the doorway of
the building — of the Texas School Book Depository Building?
Mrs. Baker. Tes.
Mr. Liebeleb. Thank you. * If you don't have anything else you would like to
tell us about this that you think we should know and that I haven’t asked you,
I have no other questions at this point.
Mrs. Baker. Thank you.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Liebeler asked her where the noise she heard
came from. Ms. Baker thought it was close to the underpass. Mr.
Liebeler then continued with respect to the bullet:
Mr. Liebeler. How close to the curb on Elm Street was this thing you saw hit; do
you remember? It would have been on the curb side— near the curb side away from
the Texas School Book Depository Building on the opposite side of the street; is that
right?
Ms. Baker, Yes.
Mr. Liebeler. How close to the opposite curb do you think it was?
Ms. Baker. It was approximately in the middle of the lane — I couldn’t be quite
sure, but I thought it was in the middle or somewhere along in there.
Mr. Blakey. Later Ms. Baker describes the bullet’s relation to
the car: ‘1 thought it was — well — behind it.”
In addition to those who heard shots, saw smoke, or saw the
impact of bullets, there is testimony in the Commission’s record of
what may be fairly described as suspicious conduct around the
knoll — footprints by the fence, an individual who identified himself
as a Secret Service agent when no agent was supposed to be in that
area, activity that could be called flight— but the fact remains that
no one gives credible testimony that he saw anyone with a rifle
around the fence at the time of the assassination. In the absence of
such testimony or hard evidence that would corroborate or inde-
pendently substantiate the ear- and eye- witness testimony point-
ing toward the knoll shot, the Commission concluded the shots
came from only one place: The Texas School Book Depository
where Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, worked.
In September 1977, the committee learned of the possibility of
obtaining what the Commission lacked: An acoustics analysis of a
sound recording of what happened in Dealey Plaza. There was in
existence a Dallas police tape that had recorded the sounds of the
assassination from the transmitter of a motorcycle policeman
whose microphone switch was in the on position. The committee
hoped it might obtain evidence not considered by the Commission.
554
The committee searched for the best people in the acoustics field.
After careful consideration, it contracted with the firm of Bolt,
Beranek & Newman of Cambridge, Mass., for an analysis of the
tape.
Early testing by the firm was uneventful, since all that had been
made available to the committee was a copy of the original tape on
which no audio sounds could be discerned. But with the help of a
retired assistant chief of the Dallas Police Department, the com-
mittee eventually obtained the original of the November 22, 1963,
dispatch tape, along with dictabelts that had recorded the trans-
mission.
The analysis of the dispatch tape was conducted by James E.
Barger, chief scientist at B.B. & N. After preliminary filtering. Dr.
Barger was able to locate several segments of the tape that con-
tained impulses that might have been caused by gunfire. The im-
pulses were then put through six screening tests, as follows:
One: Did the impulse patterns occur at the approximate time of
the assassination?
Two: Were the impulse patterns unique and not repeated else-
where in the tape?
Three: Did the intervals between the impulses approximate the
timing of the shots as indicated on the Zapruder film?
Four: Did the shape of the impulses resemble the shape of re-
corded impulses produced by tests of comparable gunfire through
comparable transmission systems?
Five: Was the amplitude of the impulses similar to that recorded
in tests of comparable gunfire through comparable transmission
systems?
Six: Did the number of impulses in the expected echo pattern of
Dealey Plaza approximately correspond to what was recorded on
the tape?
In actual firing tests conducted on behalf of the committee by
the Dallas Police Department in Dealey Plaza in August, Dr.
Barger set out to determine what the echo structure looks like for
two shooter locations — the TSBD and the grassy knoll — and several
target locations along the motorcade route. He then matched his
1978 Dealey Plaza environment data with the 1963 tape, and he
was able to arrive at several conclusions:
First, the motorcycle whose radio transmitted the broadcast was
apparently in Dealey Plaza; second, there was a 95-percent prob-
ability that two of the impulses were caused by gunshots; and,
three, there was a 60- to 70-percent probability there were three
shots. And finally, four, there were indications of a fourth shot
from the grassy knoll, but at the time he was to testify in public
hearing of the committee in September 1978, Dr. Barger was only
willing to call it a 50-50 probability.
The committee then asked two independent experts who had
been recommended to the committee by the Acoustical Society of
America to review the work of Dr. Barger and determine if they
might be able to refine it. Prof. Mark Weiss and his assistant, Mr.
Ernest Aschkenasy, agreed to try to refine Dr. Barger's work. At
the committee's request, they focused on the third shot, the one
that Dr. Barger thought might have come from the grassy knoll.
555
The effort took from September until the end of November. They
are available to testify here this morning.
Professor Weiss received a B.E.E. degree from the City College of
New York in 1952, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from
Columbia University in 1957. From 1957 until 1964, he worked as a
project engineer for the Federal Scientific Corp., and from 1965
until 1974 he was vice president of that corporation for acoustical
research. He is presently a professor in the Department of Comput-
er Science of Queens College of the City University of New York, a
position he assumed in 1974.
Professor Weiss is the author of over 30 articles and technical
reports concerning electronics for acoustical engineering. He has
worked on projects such as the development of instruments for
real-time spectrum analysis of audio signals; development of the
first real-time system for extraction of vocal pitch using the cep-
strum approach; and he is currently involved in development of
techniques for reducing wide band noise and other interference on
speech recordings to increase the detectability and intelligibility of
speech.
From November 1973 until June 1974, Professor Weiss was a
member of a panel of technical experts appointed by Chief Judge
John J. Sirica to examine the White House tape recordings in
connection with the Watergate grand jury investigation.
He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and a
member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineering.
Mr. Ernest Aschkenasy received a B.E.E. from the City College of
New York in 1967, and his M.S. from the City College of New York
in 1972. From 1967 until 1974, he worked as an engineer with the
Federal Scientific Corp., where he had primary responsibility for
the development of computer programs for analysis and reduction
of large volumes of acoustic data. In 1974, Mr. Aschkenasy also
assisted in the Watergate tape analysis and began his present work
as a research associate for the Department of Computer Science at
Queens College of the City University of New York, where he is
presently acting as Prof. Mark Weiss' assistant.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call as
witnesses Professor Weiss and his associate, Mr. Aschkenasy.
Chairman Stokes. The committee calls Professor Weiss and Mr.
Aschkenasy. May I ask both of you to stand, raise your right hand
and be sworn? Do you solemnly swear the testimony you give
before this committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. Weiss. I do.
Mr. Aschkenasy. I do.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you. You may be seated. The commit-
tee recognizes deputy chief counsel Gary Cornwell.
TESTIMONY OF PROF. MARK WEISS AND MR. ERNEST
ASCHKENASY
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Professor Weiss and
Mr. Aschkenasy, are you familiar with the work of Dr. Barger and
his team of scientists at Bolt Beranek & Newman, which led to Dr.
Barger’s testimony in September of this year before the committee?
Mr. Weiss. Yes; we are.
556
Mr. Cornwell. When did you first have the opportunity to
review that work?
Mr. Weiss. In August of this year we examined the results of Dr.
Barger's analysis up to that time, and also reviewed the plan for
the reconstruction experiment to be conducted in Dallas and
judged whether the experiment was necessary to be performed. We
did visit Dr. Barger at his lab in Cambridge, Mass., and had a
lengthy discussion with him, saw his result, and reported back to
the committee that in our opinion the reconstruction experiment
was not only fully justified but also necessary for the continuance
of his analysis.
Mr. Cornwell. So at that time you simply reviewed the process-
es and techniques that Dr. Barger was using and specifically you
did so for the purpose of rendering an independent opinion to the
committee as to the necessity of going to Dallas and conducting the
lab test; is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Cornwell. After the hearings of September were concluded,
were you again asked to look at the work of the team of Bolt,
Beranek & Newman in more detail?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. We were asked to take a more de-
tailed look at not only their work, but also at the Dallas police tape
recording.
Mr. Cornwell. What was the purpose of that request? What
were you asked to do on this occasion?
Mr. Weiss. The object there was to perform a refined analysis of
the data relating to the presumed shot occurring, the third possible
shot that was examined by Dr. Barger, the one that was thought to
have been the result of a gun firing at the grassy knoll.
Mr. Cornwell. And you began that work in early October?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Cornwell. And yoii just very recently concluded the work;
is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Based upon the work, were you able to reach a
conclusion with any ^eater degree of certainty as to whether or
not that shot did or did not occur?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir, we did.
Mr. Cornwell. And what was your conclusion?
Mr. Weiss. It is our conclusion that as a result of very careful
analysis, it appears that with a probability of 95 percent or better,
there was indeed a shot fired from the grassy knoll.
Mr. Cornwell. Let me ask you— just very, very recently you
reached that conclusion — would you tell us why it was that it took
from early October until just very recently to complete your work?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir, our problem was that we had other obliga-
tions in addition to working on this problem. We have a major
contract with the Air Force for development of some special pur-
pose speech processing equipment, and in order to both work on
that and work on this problem, we could not work on this problem
fulltime.
Mr. Cornwell. Would you very generally describe for us what
the scientific principles are that you utilized in your work?
557
Mr. Weiss. Well, the principles are basically the fundamental
principles in acoustics, namely, that if someone makes a loud noise
somewhere, like here [witness claps his hands], that sort of thing,
everybody in this room can hear that noise, which means that
sound moves out in all possible directions. A second principle is
that that sound which they hear directly also will bounce off walls
and be reflected. So they will hear not only the direct sound but
also sounds called echoes bouncing from walls, corners, and other
surfaces. The third principle, also very fundamental, is that the
speed of sound is constant in whatever direction it may go. So that
the farther you are from the source of the sound, the longer it will
take for that sound to reach you, whether that source is, in fact,
the original source of the sound or a reflecting surface which would
cause an echo. I would like to illustrate basically what is meant by
echoes at this point here. I think everybody is pretty much aware
of what happens if you stand at a canyon and holler something like
“Hello'' and you get back a series of “Hello, hello, hello," that sort
of thing. You can hear each of these echoes in such a circumstance
because the reflecting surfaces are quite far apart from you and
from each other. In a situation such as an echo generated in
Dealey Plaza, you have reflecting surfaces, also the walls and
corners of the buildings there. They, too, will generate echoes, but
they will tend to come in very much more closely in sequence so
that even if you have a very short, sharp sound such as a rifle
firing, OK, or again a clap of the hands, you will get back what to
an observer or many observers will sound like a single, loud bang-
type thing. But if you were to record that and play it back at one-
quarter or one-eighth the speed you recorded it, you will be able to
hear something like the independent echoes coming back, in fact
what you would hear would be something like bang-bang-bang-
bang, and diminishing in amplitude as you get echoes over longer
periods. To the human ear you don't hear that because the first
loud sound partially deafens the ear, and it decreases your sensitiv-
ity to the later arriving sounds. What you hear is a single loud
sound with a diminishing intensity.
Mr. Cornwell. In what we might describe as a complex urban
type of environment with a number of different solid structures in
it such as you might find in any city or in Dealey Plaza, do I
understand, then, that the echoes would arrive back at a varied
spacing in time; they would not all arrive back at the evenly
spaced intervals?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. They will arrive back at spacings
which depend entirely on where the listener is relative to the
surfaces that produce the reflections that generate the echo paths
and also it will depend on where the source of the sound is.
Mr. Cornwell. So if then you were given one location for the
listener and one location for the sound source, would you get the
same type of pattern time after time if you reproduce the sounds
from that location?
Mr. Weiss. Yes. In fact, if you had to listen, as in the specific
case of Dealey Plaza, if you had a listener standing someplace in
the Plaza, say on the sidewalk near the depository building, and he
stood still and a rifle was exactly held in another place, as the rifle
fired, he would hear a succession of echoes. If it was fired again, he
35-379 O - 79 - 3f>
558
would hear identically the same succession of echoes if nobody
moved. If he came back 15 years later and the buildings were the
same, as they are in this case, and he stood in the same spot and a
rifle was fired from exactly the same spot and the temperature of
the air was the same he would, in fact, even then hear exactly the
same sequence of echoes. If somebody is standing close by, but not
in exactly the same place, he will hear a similar succession of
echoes but not identically the same. There will be small measur-
able differences. The farther away the other listener gets from the
first person, the greater the difference will be in the pattern of
echoes that he hears.
Mr. Cornwell. And likewise, I take it if you were to move the
location of a sound source, whether it is someone clapping their
hands or rifle fire, you also, by moving it a few feet, would get a
different echo pattern?
Mr. Weiss. You would get a different echo pattern.
Mr. Cornwell. How well established are these acoustics princi-
ples you have been describing?
Mr. Weiss. These have been established a very long time. They
have been known for several hundred years. These are fundamen-
tal things in acoustics, the things taught in high school or college
undergraduate level physics.
Mr, Cornwell. Were there other more complex or more sophisti-
cated principles that you were required to use in your analysis
which were not so well established, which were newer or less well
established?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir. We only needed to apply these basic well-
tested, well-established principles; nothing more.
Mr. Cornwell. In your analysis, what equipment were you re-
quired to use?
Mr. Weiss, Basically we used a large plan map of Dealey Plaza,
Mr. Cornwell. A survey map?
Mr. Weiss. A survey map; that is correct. The scale was 1 inch
corresponding to 10 feet in Dealey Plaza. We used a long graduated
ruler that could be extended to measure long distances on the map.
We used a hand calculator for computing some very simple things,
and we used a device, an electric device called an oscilloscope, for
observing the wave shapes of the sounds that we got when we
played back tape recordings, and also a device that enabled us to
plot these patterns on paper so that we could examine them in
very fine detail.
Mr, Cornwell, Were you required to use anything sophisticated
such as a computer or anything beyond what you have mentioned?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir. This is the only equipment that we used.
Mr. Cornwell. Would you very generally describe what the
basic process was that you went through in applying these princi-
ples to the available data?
Mr. Weiss. Well, basically the idea was this. As I indicated, each
position in the plaza would have a unique set of echoes associated
with it. If a sound heard on the police tape was, in fact, the sound
of gunfire heard by a microphone— and a microphone, remember,
is kind of an electronic ear — it hears the same as an ear will
hear — if that indeed was the case, then I ought to be able to find a
position for that microphone and a position for the gun such that I
could predict a pattern of echoes that would match the sounds
heard on the police tape to a high degree of accuracy. I could then
say that this kind of match of a predicted pattern with the ob-
served pattern is so close that the probability that what I am really
looking at on the Dallas police tape is noise becomes very small. So
we set out to be able to predict what the echo structures would be
at various locations in Dealey Plaza. This was the whole art of it.
As I say, it was done by using the simple concept that sound would
travel in all directions from a source and that it will reflect off
surfaces and travel back.
Mr. Cornwell. In your attempt then to calculate various echo
patterns and find out if they precisely matched or relatively pre-
cisely matched what is on the Dallas police tape, did you or were
you required to use in any way the test that Dr. Barger conducted
with his team from B.B. & N.?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir, that set of test data, in fact, proved to be
invaluable in this case. It was by analysis of a number of these
firings that Dr. Barger and his associates recorded in, I guess it
was, August of this year that we got to become familiar with the
acoustical structure of Dealey Plaza. By using these recordings in
conjunction with this map of Dealey Plaza, we got to know where
the buildings — where were the reflecting surfaces that gave rise to
the echoes that could be heard.
Mr. Cornwell. In addition to the tests that Dr. Barger conduct-
ed, did you need anything else, any other information in order to
follow this process?
Mr. Weiss. Well, yes. We needed, in order to perform this predic-
tion process, we needed to know a number of things. First, we
needed to know where the sources of sound were.
Now, of course, that means we had to have some idea of where a
shooter might have been, and by all indications, he had to be
someplace up on the grassy knoll, and we had that area taken care
of.
We had to know, of course, also where the reflecting surfaces
were. That is for a particular assumed position of the microphone,
where the major reflecting surfaces were. So we had to refine our
understanding of how the echoes were produced in that case. We
had to know approximately where the motorcycle was, because
although this technique is simple and straightforward, it can
become pretty tedious if you don't know approximately where or
reasonably well where the motorcycle is, and you can assume it to
be anywhere in the Plaza, So we had to have some idea where it
was. And what we assumed was that it was approximately in the
neighborhood of that microphone that gave the strongest matching
pattern in Dr. Barger's experiment between a shot from the knoll
and the impulses audible on the police tape recordings.
Furthermore, in order to calculate the echo times, the time of
arrival at each of these echoes, we had to know what the velocity
of sound was in the air. As I said before, the velocity of sound is
constant in all directions. However, it is not always the same
value. In particular, it is a function of the temperature of the air.
So we had to find out what was the temperature of the air at the
time of the assassination. And that was about all we really had to
know in order to perform the prediction.
560
Mr. Cornwell. Would you have an opinion to know what speed
the tape recorder ran at that recorded the initial sounds?
Mr. Weiss. Yes. We had an estimate from Dr. Barger that the
speed of the tape recorder was about 5 or so percent slow from a
normal, nominal speed, and we had to build this factor into the
correction of time observed on the tape so we could get a time
interval for the echoes, if, indeed, these impulses are echoes, that
would be true for a correctly running tape.
Mr. Cornwell. Just to be sure I understood one statement you
made, you said you needed to know the source of the sound, the
location of the source of the sound, and the location or approximate
location of the motorcycle.
Do I understand from that that what you are saying is you need
to know a general area in which to begin making your calcula-
tions?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, that is what I meant. As I said, I
assumed that the motorcycle would have been somewhere in the
vicinity of microphone 4, for example, which was down on Elm
Street in the experiment performed by Dr. Barger.
Mr. Cornwell. So you didn't take as a given that the motorcycle
was in that location, and you simply began to look in that general
area.
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, and if we had not found it, we would
have looked in a wider and wider zone.
Mr. Cornwell. Ultimately you may have found it was not even
in the Plaza.
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. In fact, this brings up another point.
If, in fact, after diligent searching we could not get a pattern of
echoes, a predicted pattern of echoes, that would sufficiently close-
ly match the impulses visible on the police tape recording, then we
would have to conclude either that we did not have a shot recorded
there, or that if we did have a shot recorded, then the motorcycle
was not anywhere near the position we had assumed it to be, or
the shooter was not anywhere near the position we assumed to be,
or both conditions.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Chairman, I would ask at this time that we
leave exhibit F-361, which has previously been admitted, on the
easel, and also add to it, the exhibit F-349, which was previously
admitted in these hearings in September, and, in addition, I would
request that exhibits F-672 and F-667 be admitted into evidence
and displayed so that all four exhibits are displayed simulta-
neously.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, they may be entered into
the record and displayed appropriately.
[The exhibits follow:]
561
TmI Hnmn tar tM • (KmM, T«fta Hu, H
Hioitaid al Anajr Mtewytiowaa < and 6
562
564
Mr. Cornwell. Professor Weiss, I would ask, if you would be
able to, utilizing those exhibits, to actually illustrate for us the
process that you employed in reaching your final conclusion.
Mr. Weiss. Sure.
Just to illustrate briefly what I was saying before, here is a
photograph of Dealey Plaza, and let’s assume for a moment that
you have an observer standing right around over here, sort of
visible on the street between these two trees, and then you have a
source of sound in this area here, which would be behind the
wooden stockade fence on the grassy knoll.
Now, if he fires a rifle at this point, the sound of that firing will
go directly to the observer over here. It will also go to this building
over here, the so-called DCRB, Dallas County Records Building,
and bounce back to the observer. It will also go to the corner of
these buildings here, and each of these corners’ reflections will
then bounce back.
Now the time taken for the sound, the original sound to reach
the observer depends, of course, upon how far the observer is from
the rifle — and by the “observer” here, it could be an individual or
it could be a microphone — and this time is the distance the sound
travels divided by the velocity of sound, which is approximately,
say, 1,100 feet per second.
Now, the time taken for this echo here to come back to the
observer will be the total distance taken going from the rifle to the
building and then back to the observer, also divided by the velocity
of sound. As you can see, each of these echo paths will have a
different length. Therefore, there will be a different travel time for
each echo. What that means is that you will hear first the one
sound and then a whole series of them coming in, each of these
coming in after the first sound you hear.
Now, this exhibit illustration here shows the intensity of the
sounds that were received by microphone No. 4 in the Dallas
reconstruction experiment for a shot fired from the grassy knoll
area. Microphone 4 was in fact approximately over here.
This first rather tall, dark line, which I hope is visible to every-
one, is, in fact, the intensity of the sound received for the direct
muzzle blast, the first sound. Following that, there are a series of
dark lines which are, in fact, the echoes coming into the micro-
phone following its receiving the muzzle blast sound. Way out over
here, about three-tenths of a second after the first one, is another
sound, and there are some others that are further out and sort of
getting smaller and smaller and so on.
Now, the way you use this information in identifying the echo-
generating sources is as follows. Here is a topographic survey map
of Dealey Plaza which gives us a better view of where things are, it
is turned around from the way that one is. Here is Elm Street.
This is Houston Street. Elm Street. Here is the grassy knoll area.
Here is the position of microphone No. 4. The shooter is here. The
sound goes from here directly to here. It also goes to this building,
bounces off it, goes back to the microphone. It goes to various
corners represented over here for various other structures and
buildings. And all is recorded.
Now, supposing we want to know what was the echo producing
surface that gave rise to this echo in the recording. Well
565
Mr. Cornwell. Professor, excuse me one more time.
Mr. Weiss. Sure.
Mr. Cornwell. The wiring is having trouble picking up your
voice. Could we move the mike up perhaps to your tie or lapel?
Mr. Weiss. OK.
Now we know what the time taken for the direct sound to reach
the microphone was, because we know the distance precisely from
the rifle to the microphone.
Mr. Cornwell. And again you are still now talking about on the
test?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, this is simply for the purpose of confirming our
understanding of exactly where, and it is important to know exact-
ly where, the echo-generating surfaces are.
Mr. Cornwell. So you, in other words
Mr. Weiss. So this location is approximately in Dealey Plaza.
Mr. Cornwell. So, in other words, you are using Dr. Barger's
test waves, which are the exhibits you have been referring to, and
when those were generated, of course we were all standing there
watching, and we know exactly where the shooter was located and
exactly where the microphone was. Is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. We had good information as to where
both of these points were so we could know in advance what the
distance was from the shooter to the microphone, and we knew
what the time would be that it took for the sound to go directly
from the rifle to the microphone.
Now, we also know what the additional time was from the time
that the first sound of the rifle was received to the time this echo
here that we are interested in was received. If you add this amount
of time to the direct time, you have a total time taken to go from
here to some echo-generating surface and to the microphone. All
right? If you know what that total time is, you can, therefore,
predict what the total path length was. OK? Because you now take
that total time, now you multiply it by the velocity of sound, and
you can compute how many feet, in fact, that sound traveled before
it came back and was recorded as this highest peak at this point.
Fine. What you do is the following: Knowing the length of that
path — and this is scaled, as I said, approximately at 1 inch equals
10 feet— you can find out the length of that path in inches; you
simply cut a piece of string to that length — and I just happen to
have some string here pre-cut.
Now I am going to put a pin in here at the position of the rifle. I
am going to put another pin in at the known position of the
microphone.
Now this piece of string, the length of this corresponds, in fact, to
the distance the sound must have traveled in order to have pro-
duced this echo. And I sort of now loop it between here and here.
Now sound travels in straight lines so that this string if— I hope
it is visible — now if I pull tight on it, it forms two straight lines. It
will form a line going from the rifle to some reflecting surface and
then bouncing from that surface back to the microphone.
OK. Well, so we start looking — well, there is nothing out here,
over here — and what you do is move the string along here over
until it intercepts a surface. Well, in passing through here, has to
go further, so this can't be it. And you keep on trying, and because
566
it is easier to do with a pencil, OK, so we can now sort of see the
arc formed, the possible positions for a reflecting — a surface that
will generate an echo.
And as I bring it along, you can see that it just touches this
building over here. If I proceed on, it moves away from it, and, in
fact, this is the only point at which this line will just touch the
surface. It can’t go beyond it, and can’t fall in front of it. It just,
just touches it in order to be considered to be a surface that
generated that echo. And so we have now the location of the
surface that produced this echo over here. And it is, in fact, the
wall of the Dallas County Records Building.
Now we can take another echo, just to illustrate the process
again. We take one that’s closer in; we pull out this string; and for
that one, again, the same calculation. We know what the time to
get from the rifle to the microphone is. We know what the time,
later, that we hear this additional echo is, so we know how long
that echo actually traveled from the rifle to some surface back to
the microphone. And we do the same thing: We compute that in
terms of real distance, and then we cut a string according to that
distance, scaled to this map. I hook one end of it around the
position of the rifle.
As one can see, one does not need a large digital computer to do
this kind of thing. Put one end where the microphone or observer
is, and we start again doing this business of stretching, and, as
again you can see, there is really nothing in here that just touches
anything.
So we try the other side here and, lo and behold, we hit this
corner over here. There’s a wall that is apparently about 4 or 5 feet
high at this point, and this string has now just touched this point,
so that for this instance the echo traveled from the rifle to this
corner of the wall, and now back up to the microphone.
So that’s how we identified or confirmed these two points as
echo-generating surfaces.
Well, we picked out, in fact, a total of some 20 or so, or 22
actually, echo paths that we were able to determine by analysis of
exactly this sort, just continuing on down the line, picking up these
echoes as they can be seen on here and using this technique to
actually find where they were generated.
Mr. Cornwell. Then from that process, as I understand, you
were able to sort of confirm what the real echo structure of Dealey
Plaza was?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Which surfaces in it generated echoes from
roughly the area of the grassy knoll and being received roughly in
the area of the second pin?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. These surfaces would be correct for
that set of conditions for something out here and for something in
around here. For something elsewhere it would have been perhaps
a different set of echo-generating surfaces.
Mr. Cornwell. So after you had made that determination, what
use did you make of what you had learned?
Mr. Weiss. OK. As I said earlier, the objective was to be able to
see if we could, in fact, predict a set of echoes that would closely
567
match the impulses that we could hear and observe on the Dallas
police tape recording.
Now this is a wave form chart of the Dallas police tape record-
ing. Here is actually what you hear, but this is what it looks like in
terms of the variations of electrical signals as times goes on. Here
is time moving along in this direction, and here's how the signal
strength varies. It's a big bang here and here and here (indicating).
These are primarily the impulses I am talking about in this set
of data.
Mr. Cornwell. Let me ask you, before you begin to describe that
exhibit: Why is it that the wave form which you have printed there
from the Dallas P.D. tape appears to us to look absolutely nothing
like the test tape wave forms that Dr. Barger created?
Mr. Weiss. Dr. Barger's wave form here represents the total
power or strength of the signal as we see it.
The problem here was to actually be able to look, indicate points
where that energy level was significantly above the background
noise level, which was relatively quiet here, but also to get some
sense of the relative strengths of these echoes coming back. This is
different because we were interested in very precise measures of
time elapsed from any point to any other point in this pattern.
Mr. Cornwell. In other words, it's simply a different way of
displaying
Mr. Weiss. That's all it is.
Mr. Cornwell [continuing]. The sound?
Mr, Weiss. The same information is displayed in both of them;
yes, sir,
Mr. Cornwell. In other words, it is the space between the peaks,
and not whether they go up or below the line, that is important?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Cornwell. OK. Would you proceed?
Mr, Weiss. Now what we did, very simply, was, we put a shooter
someplace on the knoll over here, we put a microphone someplace
in the plaza over here, and then we started the prediction process.
Now the prediction process is sort of the reverse of the process
we had used before.
Could I have the scale? Thank you.
In the prediction process, you don't know, of course, where the
shooter is, and you don't know where the microphone is. You make
an assumption. You say, “Well, I am going to put him down over
here somewhere, let's say the corner of the fence, and I am going
to put the microphone over here, let's say somewhere on to the
right side, closer to the north side of Elm Street here," and, OK,
fine.
So now I have this position here; I can measure off on here what
the total path length is, and I can convert that into the time it
would take for the sound to travel directly from here to here. Fine.
Now I know where my echo-generating surfaces are, so I now can
measure from the rifle to an echo-generating surface to a point;
and then I can measure from that point, let's say, back to the
microphone. I have a total path length; I can convert that into the
total time it took for this echo to travel from here to this position
here.
568
Now I know that original direct travel travel time; I know the
echo time. The difference between these two corresponds to the
time spacing — say, in this case — between this large bang of the
muzzle blast, and some echo time.
Now I believe there is a blackboard here that I can use. Is there
chalk?
Let me just sort of represent things this way here.
Chairman Stokes. Professor, can you turn the blackboard just a
little bit so the committee can see it?
Mr. Weiss. Surely. We will move this back again later on.
OK. Supposing that, in fact, this represents time running along
here, and this is the time at which you received the muzzle bang
itself, OK, which would correspond to this again, this first large
dark mark on the exhibit there, and I have computed now for this
first position echo a time that that echo would arrive, which might
be, let's say, over here. OK, that's one echo.
Now I go ahead and I say, OK, that's one surface. I know there
are other surfaces here, and I start computing the echos that would
be received at that position of the microphone for that position of
the shooter, I have assumed when echoes would come in from other
surfaces that are known to be echo generators for this set of
positions, and I might get some kind of pattern, OK, like this, and I
would want to compare that with, in fact, the pattern for the
Dallas police tape recording.
And so I line up what looks like the muzzle blast, the sound,
which is this very first, very large peak over here, and I say, all
right, that one corresponds to this over here, so let's put this one in
over here; and now I have a set of sounds which sort of looks like
this.
And then there are a few things out further here, and then
maybe something else out over here.
Well, you crank this all through, and you find it doesn't match
at all. This is nowhere near it, so what you do is, you start moving
the microphone around and/or moving the motorcycle — pardon me,
the rifle — around.
Mr. Cornwell. In other words, what you have concluded by the
very first choice, arbitrary choice, is that the shooter was not in
the location you chose, or the microphone was not in the location,
or both?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, or both — you don't really know — both
are variables. So we start moving them around. The whole process
is one of experimentation, trial and error, until finally you begin to
get some set of data that begins to look reasonable, and then you
can close in on a set of positions that will give a reasonably good
and accurate match.
Well, this is, in fact, what happened. I got a set of positions
which gave an extremely good match to this early set of echoes.
This is the Dallas Police Department tape; these are the predic-
tions. OK, here's what is actually being matched to, the observed
data, and this is the predicted data.
Now after a while we got some very good agreements with this
set of data here that was not as good for the echoes that were out
at a distance there. All right, so we started adjusting again until,
in fact, we got excellent agreement for here. Only what happened
569
now was, we didn^t get such good agreement as we had before for
the early echoes.
And after doing this enough times, the light finally dawned, and
it occurred to us that the concept wasn’t complete. We weren’t
dealing with a shooter here and a microphone here. We were
dealing with a shooter here all right, but with a microphone that
wasn’t just here; it was in motion; it was going down the street. If
it was a motorcycle in the motorcade, it had to have been in
motion; it couldn’t just be standing there in the middle of the
street; and, in fact, if it was going down the street it was probably
going at about the speed of the motorcade, which was supposed to
be about 11 miles an hour.
So we started moving the microphone down the street at 11 miles
an hour, and for this set of moved positions — now predicting what
the echo pattern would be at every position as it comes on down —
let’s say, at what time it would receive each of these echoes.
This is a somewhat more complicated process. It is the same
process; it just takes a lot longer because you have to do a lot more
calculations.
As soon as we started doing that, it became immediately obvious
we could quite easily find positions for the rifle and for the motor-
cycle, such that the match at both the early and the late echoes
was getting increasingly close; and, in fact, once we were there, we
were practically in the ballpark. It was a little more work, and we
closed on a set of echoes that we could predict that matched the
observed impulses on this pattern with an accuracy of approxi-
mately one-thousandth of a second.
Mr. Cornwell. So you found that by moving the microphone at
approximately 11 miles an hour, the peaks that you predicted the
wave form would look like were correct all the way through from
the beginning to the end of particular parts of a tape?
Mr. Weiss. That’s correct. That’s correct.
Mr. Cornwell. And each of those peaks fell exactly where you
would expect them to fall within one-thousandth of a second?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. In fact, I have on here numbered
some 22 pe^ks for which I can predict an echo path that will match
it to within one-thousandth of a second.
Mr. Cornwell. Are you able to quantify in some fashion the
probability that results from the ability to identify a large number
of peaks, as you did, to that degree of precision?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, if you have a fit of some 22 points, you have a
terrific fit to begin with. It really is hard to imagine this could be
an accident, but you can’t express it in those terms. You have to
reduce it to some formal number that you can actually show is
reasonable.
Now some of these echoes, and particularly the early ones
coming from surfaces such as doorways over here and some corners
over here, come in small. In fact, they come in below the noise
level of impulse peaks in the general area of the recording where
this is heard.
There is noise that is heard; there is the motorcycle noises; there
is electrical noise; static is coming in. All of this is approximately
at the level shown by these dashed lines on this exhibit.
570
Now we didn't want to include anything that might be noise in
this comparison; we wanted to deal only with things of which we
could be reasonably certain. So we excluded from the consideration
anything which was at the noise level itself. If we knew it was
below that level, then it was more probably noise than anything
else, we excluded it. We wanted to know do those things that
excessed this noise level match? Well, if so, how many are there,
how many do we expect to find, and how many are matched?
The answer to those three points is that there are a total of some
14 of these greater-than-noise-level peaks observed; there are a
total of 10 of them that, in fact, correspond very closely to echo
paths that we have been able to predict.
Now our predictions also show that we should have had 12
larger-than-noise-level peaks present; but if you take these num-
bers and put it in an equation or formula known as the binary
correlation formula, you get a number, known as a binary correla-
tion coefficient, of .77, which says, in effect, that this pattern
matches, is matched by a corresponding pattern of strong echoes
with a coefficient of .77.
If you take that now and you say, well, what is the probability
that this is noise, that it is just an accident that these impulses
happened to fall into this sequence of spacings, the answer that
you get then is that the probability that this is noise is less than 5
percent.
In fact, putting it in a slightly different way, if I may, if I were a
betting man, I would say that the odds are 20 to 1 that this is not
noise; and I would take 20-to-l odds.
Mr. Cornwell. Just to be sure that it is clear, could you have
put the microphone at where — I mean, the shooter — at where you
ultimately located it and moved the microphone alone and compen-
sated for the error?
Let's suppose you erroneously placed the shooter.
Mr. Weiss. OK. In fact, we performed experiments along that
line. Once we knew where ever^hing was, we then tried to adjust
positions, and we found that if you move the shooter by perhaps 5
feet on here, you could compensate in a sense for that by moving
the initial position of the microphone by about 1 foot, but that
when you did that, the compensation was never going to be perfect
and, in fact, the range of fit of prediction to observed peak was now
somewhat greater than 1 millisecond; it ran to about 1.5 millisec-
onds.
If you started moving the shooter much more than 5 feet away,
you really could not find a position of the microphone that would
give any kind of decent fit anymore.
Mr. Cornwell. So the only two locations in Dealey Plaza which
would produce this echo pattern would be the shooter as you have
located it on the grassy knoll within the 5 feet circumference?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Cornwell. And likewise, a microphone location within
about a foot and one-half?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. We tried numerous positions for the
shooter on the grassy knoll area and, of course, many positions for
the microphone, and these are the two that yield the tightest and
best fit.
571
Mr. Cornwell. From that, I take it that you have established to
a very high confidence level that it is a shot from some sort of
firearm.
Let me ask you if you were able to tell from the wave forrns
what kind of firearm it was, whether it was supersonic or subsonic,
or a rifle or a pistol?
Mr. Weiss. Right. Of course, we have been dealing, up until now,
with the question of the sounds of the muzzle blast, which this is
identified as, and of all the different echoes that come in later on.
Now if— if this was a rifle firing a supersonic bullet, then we
would expect that immediately preceding the sound of the muzzle
blast we would find the sound of the shockwave generated by the
bullet while it is in flight that always precedes the muzzle blast;
and, of course, it precedes it because the bullet is flying at a speed
much greater than the speed of sound.
And if we look in the data, we, in fact, do find a very strong
impulse preceding the muzzle blast by a reasonable distance that is
not so close so that it could not possibly be it, nor is it too far away.
It is pretty much in the right position to be considered to be a
probable shockwave sound, recorded just before the recording of
the direct muzzle blast sound.
You can see similar such events, of course, over there on the
recording of the test firings in Dealey Plaza.
Over here I have been pointing previously to the muzzle blast
sound arriving. Well, just before it, over here, there is a dark line
which, in fact, is the sound of the shockwave that arrives at the
microphone before the muzzle blast.
Mr. Cornwell. So are you telling us that the indications are
that it was a supersonic bullet and, therefore, probably a rifle?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Cornwell. And would you also be able to tell us from the
wave form what direction the rifle was pointed, what its target
was, and whether or not it hit its target?
Mr. Weiss. Well, to deal with the first question, it is quite diffi-
cult to say exactly where the rifle would have to have been point-
ing. It could have been pointing — now, it could have been pointing
approximately in a zone, let^s say, this wide, so that it could have
included the last position of the limousine at frame 312 of the
Zapruder film, but, of course, it could have been firing off else-
where. It couldn't have been firing, for example, straight up in the
air. You would never have observed the shockwave for such a
condition, nor for that matter could he have been firing off toward,
let's say, the underpass region, because again you would simply not
have observed it. There are other positions where in all likelihood
you would have observed it, but it would have come in at drastical-
ly different times than it does here.
If you figure out what the region is for the rifle to have been
aimed at, it does include this sort of a region along here [indicat-
Mr. Cornwell. And if that's the direction it was aimed, can you
tell us how far out the bullet went before it terminated?
Mr. Weiss. No, I cannot, because in order to know that, you have
to know both precisely where the rifle was fired — and, as I indicat-
ed, you cannot know that really — and you must know exactly what
572
the muzzle velocity of the bullet was, and there is no way of
determining that from these data,
Mr. Cornwell. You said you cannot know precisely where the
rifle was fired; you mean at what target?
Mr. Weiss. In what direction it was fired, exactly at what target
it was aimed at the time it was fired.
Mr. Cornwell. And if you were to vary the velocity of the rifle
bullet from, say, what you might expect to be a normal rifle
velocity, somewhere in the 2,000-foot-per-second range up to some-
thing considerably higher, up to the upper 3,000 or perhaps 4,000-
foot-per-second range, I take it that every time you would vary any
assumption like that you would also conclude that there would be a
different assumption about where the bullet struck?
Mr, Weiss. That is correct. Even if one makes the assumption
that it was aimed directly at the head of the President, you could,
for a range of such velocities, assume that it fell short of the
target, that it fell at the target, that it went well beyond the
target. There is simply no way of knowing.
Mr. Cornwell. With respect to the last point, Mr. Chairman, I
might suggest that we admit as an exhibit, F-673, which is simply
a Xerox copy of a 1963 Gun Digest which has the number of
velocities of rifles that were available at that time period ranging
from everything from just above supersonic speed, all the way up
to above 4,000 feet per second.
Chairman Stokes. Has it been marked as an exhibit, counsel?
Mr. Cornwell. Yes, it has.
Chairman Stokes. All right. Without objection, it may be entered.
[The exhibit follows:]
573
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L*
1120
950
111
80
4.2
1 IS
22 long Rib* Sap*r-Moidt Mark Ml
40
lead
1120
950
m
80
4.2
1.23
22 Long Rib* Svpor.Motch Mark IV
40
Lead
6«'
1060
100
1.35
22 Short Super Match for Piftoii
29
Lead
6H'
1020
67
1.00
22 Short SpoHorpruf (Coltory Pock)
29
0*
1045
—
70
—
—
U* of 500
6.50
22 Short Spottorpruf (CoMary Pock)
15
D*
1710
—
97
—
—
U> of 500
6.50
22 Windiattar Automatic kntd* Lubricolad
45
K
1055
930
m
06
4.6
2.00
tW««CoQt*4 *LC. — M*«al Cal* I* — LraA lubrica>*it K — Ko*p>rdarf Lvb— iiOala/ D* — Diiinirgratina CourUty V/tmltrn~W
293
575
WMtwii cartridoM or* with WfaKh«ri«r loodt having lh« tpm* hoik coHbnr dailgnatioi^ hone* lh«
bolitMc* gIvMi wU Mnw for tiran^ W««t«fn cortiidgnf not dvplkatad by Winchottor ora li«t*d In boldfaco
typa.lhaforogelng ahehaM*lMoforNani)ngt«nand Pat«v«lood». Pol«ncarlridg*»notdwpttcat«d by Romlngton
orn Ibtnd In boldfaco typo>
WtNOIISytR CP. RIPLi CARTRIDOM^ALUSTICS AND PRtCiS
0 yd*. MO ydt. Per M
3l*t
IIP 21
22 Hn
22 NonMtk^ V *d*
220 S«m a«g« SOMd
222 RwidKcNn
343 WMmOw SoMd. .
243 tVMMtar Umm S|mW. .
35-30 WIndiMtar HW> VaUh
3$-20 WMMOwt*- •
0 WiMbwNr*. ..
dwworS^
• ViOwV
:£sra
.-.JHST'-
270 wSiSw •
270 WMtMtar 3>gw 3|Hwd. ,
270 Wmdwoor Sagw S#Md. . .
7n37 ta/m Muctt % »Q W b y and , ,
30^30 war- - * *- ---*
30-30 WW
30-30 WOi
30-30 WiM . .
30-30 WMmoot Smw -
30 taliipl— Safw Sf««d
301 Whd m tw 3»pw I f aad. ...... llO
30S WMmOw Sur* Soaod 125
303 Win di cawSanw to — d.......... 150
303 Wadadw Wnw W— 4 130
303 WlMfaaWor Vyar Syoad ItO
301 WtodMOw 3ao«' SM«d 130
MB Wtadwow Vf» So«*d 200
30-40 K<«« SoMd 130
30-40 Kra« S«pw 5a«*d 130
30-40 Kr«a S*OW So«»d 220
30-00 SwWf IM d Sagw Bgoad 110
30-00 SnrWfltMd Saper SpMid I2S
304M SwWgOOd Sapw Sp««d 150
30-00 S|KiR«3«W 5ap« SpfMd..... 150
30-00 Spmtibid Sapw SpMd 130
30-00 Spri»««ad Vipw Sp«*d 130
30-00 SprIncOatd WloUad oi Cap 130
30-03 3 p rtnp3«ld I ppw X 130
30-00 5prOf«4td Sapw SpMd 220
30-00 SprOglMd Sapar Sp— d 220
300 So*«pa5apar Spaad.,. 150
300 boaapa $apar Spaad 150
300 Soaapa Sapar Spaad 130
300 Baaapa Bapar Spaad 130
SOOKOKMapMaSaparSpaad..- 150
300 H. 3 K Mapaaa Sapar Spaad. .
300H. 3 Ktr -
303Sa<.apa'
303 3riitdiS_
303 3rWA Sapar Spaad
33-20 WOdMOar Kgh Vato«y Sapar ipiU*.
32-20 Wiacha iHf rOHpraafll*
32-M WOAaoar lOdproatl*
33 WtadMarSpacMSaparSpaad
22 yiiwhaaar J S padal 3ajy Spe^
32- M w S diiPar
3x57 Maatar Sapar Spaad
*apxa »
Mapaaa
ia^ Spaad..
343 wtadwalar Sapar Sp^ . .
ttar Sapar'
n Sa^ 5
diTl^dlap <OI|pa|wf]«. ;
(Mr Salf-laodOg <0itp<aaf»* 130
353 WinAacMr Sapar-Spaad 300
353 WkKhaaar Sapar Spaad 230
375 H.*Kr -
375 H. 3 H 4.,^
375K 3H. Mapr
3 A40 Whebader (0Rpra«n«
33- 55 WladMdar
44 Mppaaai Sppar-X .
44-40 WiadHnrar (Oiba
43-70 C
453 Wk
453 WlMftadar k
4110
3200
3500
ft. 3070
3250
1440
U 40
2300
3030
p 2330
3200
p 2300
2450
3700
n. 3200
3430
P 3140
ft. 2*00
24*0
2410
fr. 2410
* 2220
2330
3220
3130
3340
3100
2340
3340
3410
3410
3430
ft. 2470
P 3470
p 2300
3270
h. 3200
ft. 2*70
P 2*70
ft. 2700
2700
2700
2700
fi. 2410
P 2410
A. 2470
P 2470
2370
2370
31*0
2*20
2420
1*30
2540
2130
2100
12*0
12*0
2230
ATJbp. 2120
r.A 1440
fawarPl. 2320
faararh. 3 Q 00
irjiip.
S-TJap.
S-TJap.
2510
3350
ft. 3100
p 2100
1350
1350
2530
2350
A. 2740
p 3550
2550
1320
1320
1750
1310
1320
2120
2130
2140
2440
2030
2030
3490
2440
2440
2340
2540
7330
3340
3*40
3070
3350
3420
3170
3020
1330
3310
3740
3520
2570
3350
33*0
3310
2130
3250
1*90
3330
3 S 10
3430
3470
33 M
2470
3530
3530
3130
3130
2350
2390
2040
3140
3370
3470
2370
1430
2300
1900
1430
1040
1040
1370
1370
1740
1250
1*90
34*0
2430
31 M
3460
3220
1*70
1710
1710
1540
1540
3210
2010
2440
2330
2130
1070
1140
1410
1*40
1510
1510
2*30
2170
2730
3540
1340
1030
lOU
1400
2330
2140
3500
3310
1950
3330
2700
1700
1700
1430
1430
1430
1540
2340
3430
3310
2300
1*40
2170
l*M
1330
2040
1300
2350
2430
3300
2400
3010
3350
2350
2350
1370
2130
1740
1*40
3530
3440
3150
1720
2410
3130
1*10
2040
1*40
1440
13*0
1390
1310
1310
1910
1730
2310
3040
1340
1050
1700
1600
1200
1550
1150
1150
3440
1750
2410
2320
1030
♦40
940
1340
3040
1370
31*0
1*30
14*0
3550
24*0
3340
3320
2140
1430
1430
U 30
1410
1410
1410
1150
1*20
3140
1930
2050
1430
1*70
1770
15*0
1450
1430
1970
3300
2010
3130
1740
3040
3190
2190
1470
1790
1300
1390
1530
1770
3300
2330
1940
1350
340
340
1330
1330
1330
1030
1500
2170 *
1940
14*0
1710
1433
1410
1140
1140
1140
1140
1440
1570
1*90
1330
15*0
•35
1300
730
740
1300
1140
2130
3090
405
1370
1770
1740
1930
1470
1330
3040
3130
3490
3340
3300
2410
1930
1*30
1440
1440
1340
15*0
2730
2470
2730
37 M
2720
3720
3470
3440
3440
3340
2770
3340
3*30
2*30
3*10
2*10
3*10
2*10
3330
3330
3370
3370
2340
3340
33*0
3400
3350
1450
3530
3370
370
1*40
1*40
1700
4050
4000
3730
2440
3040
I 9 S 0
1*»
1370
1370
3340
2310
4500
4330
4330
1430
740
1370
50 X 0
5140
1430
1350
2340
34*0
30*0
3340
32 W
1330
1340
1340
1350
1350
1350
1130
IVM
3030
3130
3300
3030
3330
3170
17*0
3030
l*M
1*60
31*0
3330
3370
3170
3440
3540
3540
31*0
3320
1340
1*00
1440
1340
2740
3350
3740
1330
1330
1170
570
1760
3210
3330
3110
3020
31*0
3150
IMO
3140
33 M
3430
3440
3160
1310
4050
3330
1050
1030
1310
1030
1000
1000
1000
1630
1740
1500
1370
1750
1340
1440
1530
1350
1710
1740
1930
1410
3020
3300
2300
1710
1*10
1410
1510
1340
1530
3330
2330
3360
1310
2530
3440
3430
1410
1470
1530
1410
1740
3*30
3770
3300
433
140
1030
11*0
935
320
/4lS
1910
1315
1550
1550
1100
430
430
750
730
730
443
900
1300
1340
1400
1130
1540
1400
1010
1370
1300
*00
1340
1340
1510
1310
1340
1540
1030
1190
*30
1330
1740
1*70
1340
443
445
540
*73
1330
1100
530
11*0
1370
3370
3330
1430
3Ij0
*3j0
sro
tJ
4.70
4.70
3.35
3.13
4- 41
4.45
4.45
5- SS
3.35
4.73
4.75
4.73
4.73
1.75
3.73
1.31
1.70
4.73
14 J
31.5
31.5
34.5
33.0
32.3
4.30
7A5
3.71
1.13
3.33
3.00
11.13
7-*3
294
;isS£S&s«i::e£s::uie£EKic:3»t:8!;s£Seei
576
AMMO
SEMINOTON CP. HHl CART(UDOES~-BAUISTICS AND PRICiS
StCONO CNHCT-rOOT POUNDS MID-RAMOi WAIKTORT PMCI
Mo* I00y4i. 200 rdi. SOO )t4b AAwsil* tOO ydi. 300 y4«. 100 y4«. 200 ydi. 300y4«. P»f30
220 Swift Hi-SpMd
223 B*miiitloii HrSp««4
233 RMBingtan MA-Sp««4
333 Rmilnptan Mppma* Mi'Spw
30 WinchMipr I«-Spm4
2«3 WinchMtvr HI-SpM4. ....
244 RwNngiM
344 RMlnpIpn
344 Raninpion. .. .
35-30 WlMiimtw Hl-Sp««d*. . .
25-20 Wlml>Ml«r*
25-30 WincSnNr*. . .
250 Sovop* Hi-Sp*«i
350 Save** HA-SpM^
250 Savogs Hi-SpeO
aS-3S W1 m1>hIw
35-SS WiK»>M*»r e«prM
357 Robtrh KI-Spm4
357 EapTMi
344 WHWhofNr M«giw«
244 WbichMIvr Mwmi
270 Wh*«|*r Hi-S^d
270 WiMftotr«*
370 WJ.^cttpr Hi-Sp«0
370 WJndMilM Ni-SpMd
380 RaadKgtoM
380 Rwninglpit
380 RMainglM .
380 RMalAgNm
7 mm R*mii>ol«t Megnwii
7mum RvmingliM Mogi m m
30-30 Wimlimtat Exprai*
30-30 W|Mh*il*r (Apr*M
30-30 WiK»imt*r EipraH
' 30-30 Winchvitar Exprsu
30 RDMingtQii ExprMt. ........
30 RsminglM Wgb V i Ut Oy . .
30-40 Kros Hi'Sp«*d
30-40 Krag Hi-Spe*d
30-40 Krag Htgft VolMity
30-40 Krag kprau
30-04 SpringfMd Hi-Spaad. . . . .
30-04 SpriagHald fti-Spaad
30-04 Spriagftatd Ki-Spaad
30-04 Springlidd Hi-Spaad
30-04 SpringfhM Hi-Spaad
30-04 Springftald Hi-Spaad
30-04 SpriagHald Hi-Spaad
30-04 Spriagftald PoMw Mohh..
30-04 Springftald E.pr.A»
30-04 SprIagHald Eapm
300 H. 4 H. Magnaai Hi-Spaad. -
300 H. 4 K. Mogaaia MoMh
3C3 H. 4 H. MaaiMaa Eapr«H . . .
300 Savaga Hi-Spaad
300 Savaga Hi-Spaad
300 Savaga Hi-Spaad
303 Iviiiih E>|
M3 Si
303 S
308 Win. Hi-Spaad
308 Win. Hi-Spaad ,
301 Win. Hi-Sp^
32 Raaiingtaa Eaproat
32 Wlnclmiar Spatial Eapreti . .
32 Wlndiailar Spatial Eiprat* . .
32-20 WindiaMarHi-Spoad*....
32-20 WincKatlar*.. .
12-30 WindiMfar*..
32-40 Windiailar.
348 Winchapav Hi-Spaad ... .
340 WlMhatWr Higb Vatochr
348 Wineticilar EapraM
33 8aaa»gian Hi-Spaad . .
IS Ramtnglon Enprati. . . .
35 Ramingipn Eapr
351 '
'slH-L^'ding*. -
Salf-laadiag*..
351 Winchattai . .
375 H. 4 H. Magnum
375 H. 4 H. Magauai
38-40 WiK«,.,iar*
38-55 Winthaiiar
44 Magnum Cnrbina*
44- 40 Wifirtiatfar'
45- 70 Gavammant
458 Winchapar Mognam
458 Winchavlar Magnum
7 mm. Movtar Enpratt
8 mm. Moutar Hi-Spaad. . .
8 mm. tabal Hi-Spaad
*30 par 8«a Mvih. — Mudiropm
48 3-P-
M S.P.
SO M.C
55 S.P.
80 N.S.P.
100 PI-S.P-C1.
75 PM.S.P.
•0 PidS-f,
90 Br.P.
40 Miitb.
84 laud
84 S.P.
•7 S-P-
100 Pld-S-P-CL
too S.P.CL
117 M-C
117 S.P.CA.
too Pid-S.P.C.L
117 S.P.CI.
too Pld4.P.C-L.
140 P(d.VP.Cl.
1 00 P>d.S>.
130 Pld-S-P.Cl.
130 8r.P.
ISO S.P.CL
100 8r.P.
135 Pld-S-P-C-A.
150 P»dAP.C.U
145 S.P.CI.
ISO P»d.S.P.C.L
175 S-P-C-L
150 SJ.CO.
140 MC-
170 M.C4.
170 S-P.CL
170 M.C.L
170 I-8.S-P.
HO S-P-Cl.
110 P>d-S.P-Cl.
330 I-831.P.
330 S.P.C.L.
110 Pld.S.P-
150 8r.P.
150 Pld.S.P,Ct.
125 Ptd4.P.
180 S.P.C.1.
180 Ptd-S-P.C-L
180 8r.P.
180 M.C.I.H.
330 M-Cl-
220 SJ-CL,
180 PM-S-P.C-L
180 M.C-T.H
320 M-C-l.
150
150 8f.P.
130 Pid.S.P.C.L
180 S-P.C-i.
180 Pld.S.P.CI.
313 S>.
180 I.B31.P.
180 S-P-CL-
110 Pld-S-P-
150 PW.S.P.C-L
180 PtdS.P.C4.
170 S.P.CI.
170 M.CL
170 S-P.C-l.
•0 MaiK
100 laod
100 S.P.
I4S S.P.
150 S.P.
300 LB.H.P.
300 S.7.C.I.
150 Prd.S-P.C-A-
300 M.C-L
300 S.P-C.I.
180 S.P.
177 M.C.
370 S.P.
100 M.C.
180 S.P.
333 S.P.
340 S.P.
300 S.P.
405 S.P.
510 S.P.
500 M.C.
175 SP.
170 S.P.C.I.,
170 S.P.
3M0
3110
3400
34W>
4110
3300
3300
3140
3140
3000
3570
3190
3030
3410
3330
3330
3330
3330
3330
3470
3470
3140
3440
3030
3030
3490
3450
3450
3800
3010
2790
1070
3850
3050
1100
3440
2300
2350
1950
1910
3500
3300
3240
3940
3070
3850
3880
3440
3140
3880
3440
3510
3040
2450
3300
3700
3700
3700
2700
3410
3410
3930
3930
3430
3470
3470
3470
3370
2370
3180
3140
3140
3340
2840
2410
2330
3380
3380
2100
1390
1390
1440
3890
3530
3530
3400
3310
3310
1850
1850
2740
2550
1330
1330
1850
1310
1330
3130
2130
3490
2570
2440
a Point C.L— C<
1890
3130
3350
1930
1930
3940
2710
2470
3810
3330
2470
2480
3530
3130
3130
3470
2740
3320
2370
3410
3390
3040
3140
1410
1940
1310
1510
3930
1170
3170
2340
3730
3540
3440
3330
3530
1340
1010
1010
3330
2310
1970
1480
1400
3380
1950
3880
3700
2690
3580
2430
3140
3770
2590
2440
3810
2570
3390
1890
1930
1920
1430
1040
1040
1350
2360
3140
3140
I960
1560
1540
2440
2280
1070
1840
1910
2170
2140
2240
3310
1430
1400
1430
1430
1430
1430
1830
3040
1700
1700
3490
2470
2400
2480
2010
2350
2380
2350
1870
1870
3440
2550
2050
1910
2170
3130
1740
I960
1440
1550
1550
2340
2300
2170
1410
1430
1430
1090
1580
1540
1540
1310
1310
3210
3040
1050
1400
1700
1900
1790
1940
1200
1550
1150
1150
24401
1750
1750
1930
7410
3330
3290
2330
3330
1030
940
940
3000
1490
3550
3480
3340
3330
3400
1870
2420
2320
2210
1970
2400
2010
1160
1370
U10
1410
U10
1410
1590
1850
1510
1510
2090
2240
2130
3200
1740
3040
3080
2190
1670
1470
2230
2380
1830
1440
1950
1130
2280
2090
3040
2050
2050
1770
1740
1740
1370
1370
1870
1870
3040
3180
2490
2840
3140
2410
3810
3870
7780
7910
3540
3540
1930
7050
1970
1400
UlO
1410
IS70
1280
1310
1310
1140
1140
1400
1570
1480
1570
1700
1490
1730
1570
1430
1350
7340
2490
3090
3340
3390
1980
2230
7300
7340
2310
3U0
2750
1380
1240
1350
1840
1840
2440
3440
3340
2340
2850
3930
2930
3840
2910
2910
3910
3910
3830
3830
3400
1400
3350
3370
2170
2370
2240
2340
3270
1830
1830
2710
2730
3730
1060
I960
I960
2780
3840
3840
1930
2170
3170
1370
1370
4500
4330
5140
5040
7410
7490
7430
1330
1430
1180
1380
1380
1840
2270
1400
1930
2110
3440
7370
2190
2170
2440
3440
3540
7190
7190
2850
3000
2430
1710
1930
1900
1440
I860
1720
1310
1310
1930
2300
2380
1350
1390
1390
1830
3030
3030
1380
1490
1490
3830
4050
1830
1910
1320
1550
1440
1000
1000
1000
1000
1340
1460
1410
1410
1510
2030
1920
1710
1610
2030
2080
2300
1710
1710
2380
3400
3030
1740
1570
1510
1740
1330
1310
1150
1470
1470
7900
3210
1400
1210
1490
1430
1420
3410
1430
1010
1370
1110
1110
1070
1670
1510
1340
1310
1440
1730
1900
1340
1340
1970
2340
1430
1S.5
T5.3
11.0
21.0
32.0
33.0
13J
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581
Mr. Cornwell. In addition to the characteristics of the form
which you have just described as indicating that the weapon fired a
supersonic bullet, was there anything else about the waveforms
that you discovered in your analysis?
Mr. Weiss. Yes; there are perhaps two things that are relevant to
confirming that what we are dealing with here is not noise but is
in fact a sound recording of a bullet, of a gunshot by equipment
such as was used by the Dallas police motorcycle men. First and
simplest is the following: that if, in fact, this was — no, let me put it
differently.
You can in, as part of the prediction, you can determine what
the general pattern of the shape will be at the microphone as you
receive it. Now, for example, if at the microphone, as you receive
it, you expect that — well, let me go back to the blackboard here, if I
may.
Now if the muzzle blast came in looking something like this, it
goes up, it goes down, and then it sort of settles back, then from
some of these surfaces you can quite accurately predict that it will
do exactly the same sort of thing, let us say that the echo shape
will be simply a mirror image replica of the muzzle blast.
Now if this is noise, then there is nothing which says that it has
to start out going positive. It could equally, let us say, going up-
wards, the sound could equally, with equal probability, start out
going this way and come back this way. But in every one of these
instances where we identified an echo as coming back from a flat
reflecting surface, it has precisely the correct replication quality
when compared to the pattern of the muzzle blast.
As I say, for noise, you have no right to expect that sort of thing
will happen. It is like saying I have a coin which is going to flip
once, and the first time it comes up heads, and thereafter every
time it is going to come up heads. It doesn’t happen that way.
The second thing is, if you look at these patterns in somewhat
more expanded detail than perhaps is visible here, you will see in
the case of the muzzle blast there is a very sharp, short, initial,
positive, upward going spike or peak, then it goes strongly down,
and then it comes up again, and so on.
Now, in fact, as recorded through a high-fidelity system and an
open microphone, it really does this, it is very sharply upward first,
then it goes down and so on.
Well, something must have happened to this upward, strong one
to make it seem much smaller. It now is just a little bitty one over
here. It goes down, and now it comes up afterwards, and does that
sort of thing. And we considered why that is so, and thought that it
is probable that if this is a microphone on the motorcycle, and the
motorcycle, in fact, is over here in Dealey Plaza, facing in this
direction, and if there is a rifle over here, that the windshield of
the motorcycle is sort of between the sound that comes directly at
it from the muzzle blast and the microphone, so the windshield is
screening the microphone to some degree.
Well, the effect of that can be predicted. But to confirm our
understanding of this, we arranged with the New York City Police
Department to perform some experiments at their shooting range
in the Bronx. We went out there, and they trotted out an old
Harley-Davidson motorcycle and put a transmitter on it, vintage
582
1963 or 1964, and an old microphone pretty much the same kind as
was used by the Dallas Police Department, and we performed some
experiments with people firing rifles at various locations, some-
times with the motorcycle facing the shooter, sometimes with the
motorcycle crosswise to the shooter. At the same time we made
recordings using high fidelity equipment of the sounds of the shots.
Now there were two kinds of recordings made. The first, as I say,
was high fidelity equipment, good microphone, good recorder on
the spot. The second was through the microphone which was on
the motorbike, which was a microphone of the type used in Dallas,
through the transmitter, and recorded downtown at the police
communications laboratory. And we compared the results of these
two recordings, and what we found was exactly what we had
thought we would find, that is, that in the case of the high fidelity
recording, we got that kind of big, first spike upward and down-
ward, and so on. In the case of the recording made through the
police microphone, that first spike was greatly attenuated and it
went negative and came back up and so on. This was true, howev-
er, only in the case where the motorcycle was facing the rifle.
When the motorcycle was crosswise to the rifle, the recording
made by the police microphone fairly closely matched, looks,
looked pretty much like, with some distortions, but looked pretty
much like the recording made using the high fidelity equipment.
So it was essentially confirmed that the windshield really does
have this effect on reducing the strength of that initial, very sharp
spike received, and, of course, this is what we have over here. It is
consistent with the assumption that this is a microphone behind
the windshield facing a rifle.
Mr, Cornwell. Thank you, I have no further questions.
Chairman Stokes. Professor, you may resume your seat at the
witness table.
The committee will now operate under the 5-minute rule.
Professor Weiss, I guess I am sort of reminded this morning of
how, some months ago, when several members of this committee
and I appeared before the House Administration Committee, which
is the committee of the Congress that recommends funding for all
of the committees in Congress, and one of the distinguished mem-
bers of the committee posed the question to me, he said, “Stokes,
has your investigation revealed anything that would change the
course of history?'' And I said to that Member of Congress that
nothing that we had uncovered thus far would, in my opinion,
change the course of history.
I am sure that as a scientist that you are aware of the enormous
impact that your testimony has here today, because if the commit-
tee accepts your testimony, the committee then, in effect, accepts
the fact that on that particular day in 1963 when the President
was assassinated, there were two shooters in Dealey Plaza.
From that premise, one can further assume association, and then
from association there can be the further legal asssumption, the
possibility of a conspiracy. So I am sure that you are aware of the
enormous impact of your testimony here today in terms of history.
Mr. Weiss. I am, sir; yes, sir.
Chairman Stokes. For that reason, I would assume that you
realize that for many years to come your work will be scrutinized
583
extremely carefully by persons who are interested in this fascinat-
ing aspect of evidentiary material.
I would, therefore, at this point ask you the question I asked you
in executive session. I would ask you to play the devil’s advocate
for us for a moment. Obviously there are other scientists in your
field, men who are, or women perhaps, who are as eminently
qualified as you and your associate are.
Would you, for this committee, then tell us what type of criti-
cisms could other members of your field have of your work here?
Mr. Weiss. Well, a few things. I would, of course, assume that
other researchers would read our written report before volunteer-
ing criticisms of what we have presented here today. But if I were
a critic of this work, I would look to see if, in fact, it left out of
these considerations any important parameters of the situation
that existed in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, that could
affect the predicted positions of echoes, as I have done.
Now, when we did this work, we tried very hard to take into
account every possible thing that might affect the accuracy of our
predictions. We took into account, for example, the fact that the
map itself is probably accurate to only about 1 foot, so we knew
that there was no point in attempting to push for accuracies great-
er than that quoted, approximately 1 millisecond.
We took into account the temperature as given to us by staff
members of this committee. We investigated the question, the fact
of whether humidity might have any affect on the velocity of
sound. We considered the question of whether there had been any
significant changes in the architecture in Dealey Plaza area for
those structures that could have given rise to echoes. We consid-
ered the question of waveshape, and of distortion of microphone,
and of the transmitter, and tried to take into account additional
distortions that probably would have been produced by the receiver
and the Dictabelt recorder.
Now, if there is any weakness in the results of our analysis, it
has to be in some consideration that has escaped us entirely, and
that, contrary to anything I can imagine, would have significant
impact on the measurements we have made.
We, in fact, in performing this work, made every single measure-
ment there many times, each of us made the measurements on the
map, checked the results of the other fellow’s measurement,
checked the calculations out many times, and just to be sure that
there were no errors that had crept in and then propagated
through this analysis. Otherwise, I really cannot see a basis for
finding significant fault with the acoustical analysis as described.
Chairman Stokes. Then as a scientist, you are comfortable with
the statement to this committee that beyond a reasonable doubt,
and to a degree of 95 percent or better, there were four shots in
Dealey Plaza?
Mr. Weiss. Well, I would agree with that, with the somewhat
clarification, that since our work concentrated primarily on the
third shot, the one from the grassy knoll area, I would imply for
the moment, limit the statement to that, with a, again, a confi-
dence level of 95 percent or higher, which I guess if I were a
lawyer, I might well express as beyond a reasonable doubt, that
shot took place. And then relying upon the corresponding confi-
584
dence expressed by Dr. Barger about the other shots, I would agree
with the statement that there is an overall probability of 95 per*
cent or better that there were four shots fired in Dealey Plaza.
Chairman Stokes. Let me ask you this. This is 1978, this tape
existed in 1963. Had this tape been given, let's say, to you or other
scientists who specialized in this particular area, have you done
anything new that could not have been done in 1963 with this
tape?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir; the only thing that is new — this is an old
technology that we are dealing with — the application is new, inso-
far as the use of the physics and science of acoustics for predicting
the position of a microphone and/or a gun. I believe that the first
application of it was only several years ago, and by Dr. Barger, in
the case of the Kent State shootings. But other than that, there is
nothing new in this at all.
Chairman Stokes. I recall at the executive session, I believe
Professor Blakey asked you, for purposes of clarifying it for the
committee, whether what you were basically using was high school
physics and geometry principles, and that basically that is what
you have done here.
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, sir.
Chairman Stokes. Now, what about the work of Dr. Barger?
When Dr. Barger testified before our committee on September 11,
based upon the work that he had done, he said to us at that time
that there were definitely three shots, but would not commit him-
self to more than a possibility of a fourth shot. And, of course, we
have now heard Dr. Barger's testimony in executive session, and
we will hear it here later today.
Tell the committee whether or not, if he has now changed his
opinion to agree with yours, whether such a conservative estimate
on his part at that time and his unwillingness to say that, in fact,
there was beyond a reasonable doubt a fourth shot, is the proper
type of analysis that a scientist should have made at that time,
prior to additional work being performed on his work.
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir; Dr. Barger's analysis was exactly right, as a
matter of fact. The difference between his analysis and ours, which
is, in fact, might be considered to be a kind of extension by analy-
sis, by mathematical analysis, of what he had done, or a refine-
ment, if you will, of what he did, is the following: that in our
matching of the pattern, by being able to predict precisely for a
precise location of a microphone in the plaza what the echo pattern
would have been, I was able to use an uncertainty window of about
plus or minus 1/1,000 of a second at each of the echo points that I
had predicted when I made the comparison to the peaks on the
waveform of the Dallas Police tape recording.
Now, in Dr. Barger's work, because his data were based on an
array of microphones that were strung out in Dealey Plaza, micro-
phones spaced, as I recall, 18 feet apart, he could not be sure where
the presumed motorcycle microphone was in relationship to any
one of those microphones, so he had to use an uncertainty window
which was wider. The microphone on the motorcycle, for example,
could have been halfway between two of his microphones, or closer
to one, or closer to another.
585
Because he could not know precisely where it was, he had to use
a window which was about plus or minus 6 milliseconds wide, total
width of about 12 milliseconds, compared to a total width here of
about 2.
Now, that difference is very significant in the, insofar as it
affects the degree of confidence that you can express in whether or
not the patterns that is observed there that matches a prediction
or an observed set of data is, in fact, perhaps noise and not mean-
ingful data.
And his number is a very reasonable one. Fifty percent is what I,
myself, would have quoted under those circumstances.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you, Professor.
My time has expired.
The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Preyer.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Dr. Weiss. I think that many of us who aren’t scien-
tists, when we first heard of the acoustics test, tended to think of it
as some sort of arcane science, perhaps like a polygraph test, which
my former colleague, Senator Erwin, once called modern witch-
craft. But I gather you are telling us that this is not like a poly-
graph test or modern, electronic witchcraft. It doesn’t involve any
subjective judgment; it is based on everlasting and relative simple
mathematical principles.
It was interesting to me to see you use pen and string and
thread, that you can physically maneuver and physically see until
you come out with the kind of match which would not happen in
the nature of things otherwise.
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. The differentiation is even greater
than a matter of interpretation, as one would have to do in case of
polygraph. You have to recall that polygraphs and other such
devices are based on assumed physiological responses of the human
being to some set of conditions or stimuli.
This has nothing to do with human responses or to interpreta-
tion, which may vary from one observer of results of a test to
another observer. This is simple, pure, basic physics and geometry.
Mr, Preyer, I might say, the committee’s experience with poly-
graphs, our expert panel, looking at various polygraphs that Jack
Ruby, James Earl Ray, Nosenko and others have taken, hasnT
been very encouraging as to the scientific accuracy of it; but it does
seem to me that you pointed out this is quite a different situation.
We all know as human beings that sound plays tricks on our
ears when we hear it. We had Dr. Green, a professor at MIT, a
psychoacoustics expert, testify in connection with the witnesses
that Professor Blakey mentioned earlier who testified as to where
the sound came from, and he pointed out that the shockwave of a
bullet causes a confusion of the direction of the sound, and it would
make a spectator point to the direction from which the sound came
that was actually being perpendicular from the area in which the
sound came.
While I am sure your kind of equipment doesn’t play the sort of
tricks that sound plays on the human ear, a layman like me would
wonder if other sounds had played tricks.
For example, what is the possibility of the backfire on a motorcy-
cle making this sort of waves and spikes?
586
Mr. Weiss. Well, the answer to that question is, first, I haven't
had the opportunity to examine the waveshape of a backfire of a
motorcycle, so I cannot say absolutely that this might not resemble
it in some way, but if there was a motorcycle backfiring in this
instance, that motorcycle was up there behind the stockade fence
in Dealey Plaza.
Mr, Preyer. You mentioned — and we will all be looking for
possible flaws in your analysis in view of the importance of it, as
Chairman Stokes pointed out — you mentioned that you excluded in
your calculations anything at the noise level, and you matched
peaks above the noise levels. You then said something like there
are 10 such peaks, and I understood you to say there should have
been 12. What was the meaning of that?
Mr. Weiss. Well, in fact, there are those 12 that were predicted,
are actually there. Just two of them, for reasons that I am not sure
of, came in somewhat smaller than I expected them to be, and
indeed fell below the noise level. Because they fell below the noise
level, although I was confident that I had actually confirmed their
identification, I did not include them in the correlation equation.
Had I done so, it would only have strengthened the equation, and
quite significantly strengthened it. But in order to be conservative
in this calculation, I had to simply reject them from consideration.
In fact, in the act of rejecting them I simply — in computing the
equation, the fact that I expected 12 but found only 10 — I actually
weakened the correlation.
Mr. Preyer. So you did not exclude two, which did not confirm
your analysis?
Mr, Weiss. No, sir.
Mr. Preyer. But you had two which would have further corrobo-
rated —
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Weiss, we appreciate your contribution to the record now in
public session.
Do you consider your profession pretty much of an exact science?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir.
Mr. Devine. Much more so, I take it, than you feel in the
polygraph field, because the human factor is not as prevalent?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct,
Mr. Devine. Do you consider Dr. James Barger an expert?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir, I do.
Mr. Devine. And do you respect his opinion very much?
Mr. Weiss. I do.
Mr. Devine. Do you think that he made an incomplete study,
inasmuch as his conclusions, when he testified here, I think on
September 11, suggested that there was about a 50-50 chance that
a shot was fired from the grassy knoll?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir. That study, as it was being performed, was
moving exactly along the path that any study of this sort ought to
move.
Mr. Devine. Yet you saw fit to supplement his study by a
number of things — and I have outlined them here — by seeking to
587
determine where the source of the sounds were, where reflection
surfaces were, where the motorcycle was — you assumed it was in
the neighborhood of the strongest impulses from the grassy knoll —
the velocity of sound at the temperture given on November 22,
1963, as well as the time intervals and the echoes.
Now did Dr. Barger fail to take these important things into
consideration in his study, or are these things that you found
necessary in order to arrive at a different conclusion?
Mr, Weiss. No; as a matter of fact, Dr. Barger actually intrinsi-
cally used all of his information in his study and, in fact, it really
was as a result of his study that we were able in the first place to
say that the motorcycle was there in Dealey Plaza. It was because
of his study that we were able to say that at the time of shot No. 3
it was, in fact, in the vicinity of the microphone No. 4 position in
the array when the experiment was performed in Dealey Plaza.
All of the things that Dr. Barger did were natural steps along
this kind of investigation. I am sure that had it been continued, or
had there been more time available to Dr. Barger, this further
result would have been the natural evolution of that process.
Mr. Devine. Thank you.
Going into a different direction, I assume you were not present
when Dr. Barger testified on the previous occasion; however, if I
am not mistaken, at that time they played a recording of the
sounds, and I think, inferentially, although you suggested that all
of these tests may have been available to the Warren Commission
had they sought them, that under the more sophisticated electronic
sound selection, to use an expression, that you are able to pretty
well remove the motorcycle noise, remove the street noise and still
have the blips left on the tape.
As I recall, when those tapes were played before this committee,
one, two and four sounded quite alike, but the third blip, which
from your testimony would suggest the one from the grassy knoll,
was of a different sound, at least to a layman's ear. You have
probably heard those statements since that time.
Have you come to any conclusions that the sounds were identical
or that there was a difference?
Mr. Weiss. No. As a matter of fact, I did not hear that tape,
Mr. Devine. You did not hear it?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir.
Mr. Devine, Do you have an opinion as to whether, if in fact
there was a shot from the grassy knoll, whether it hit anything in
the motorcade?
Mr. Weiss. I have no way of knowing that, sir. There is no way of
predicting or determining that from the data that are available.
Mr. Devine. Did you not try to coordinate the tapes with the
Zapruder films and come to conclusions?
Mr. Weiss. Well, we had tried some matching, but now we are
sort of out of the area of pure acoustics and getting into other
areas, and there are various matters that in fact can be reused, but
since that is not an area of my expertise, I really would rather not
comment on that.
Mr, Devine. Thank you very much.
You, of course, understand the very difficult position that this
committee finds itself in. I think it was pretty well put in an
588
editorial by a local paper here, how much weight in an evidentiary
study, whether by a court or a congressional committee, should be
assigned to an arcane science understood only by the same experts
who draw the conclusions?
Mr. Weiss. Well, I beg to disagree with the phrasing, as elegant
as it is. This is not an arcane science insofar as it is taught in high
school and college level physics, to begin with, and it can be ex-
plained and demonstrated in the manner in which I attempted to,
and I think can be understood by anybody who has ever heard an
echo.
Mr. Devine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from the District of Columbia, Mr. Fauntroy.
Mr. Fauntroy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Weiss, you have cleared up for us the question as to whether
you employed the marvels and refinements of computerized elec-
tronics to reach your conclusion about the 95 percent chance of a
shot from the grassy knoll. You have also dealt with noises which
are indistinguishable to the unaided ear. And is it your testimony
that the shots that you have distinguished were not backfires?
Mr. Weiss. Not exactly so, sir. In the case of shot No. 3, since
there is evidence of a shockwave preceding the muzzle blast, then
it would have to be concluded that this was not a backfire, since
backfires are not known to produce shockwave sounds.
Mr. Fauntroy. Then your answer is yes, that the shot which you
examined, the noise that you examined, was not in fact a backfire?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Fauntroy. If it had been a backfire, you testified it would
have had to come from the grassy knoll?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, since I did not concern myself with
the nature of the sound, only the location at which it originated.
Mr. Fauntroy. But from your knowledge of sound and the veloc-
ity of a missile traveling at that speed, it would not have been a
backfire?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Fauntroy. All right. Thank you.
Second, the problem that we have is that nobody saw anyone
with a rifle in that area. My question is: Could a shot from a pistol
have created the same noise, shockwaves and echoes?
Mr. Weiss. In order to do so, the bullet fired from such a pistol
would have had to have left the muzzle at supersonic speed, and so,
if indeed there are pistols that fire supersonic bullets, the answer
would be yes in such a circumstance. However, to my understand-
ing, most pistols do not fire supersonic bullets.
Mr. Fauntroy. So that on the basis of your knowledge we would
have to identify a pistol that fired that fast before you could
conclude that it was probably a pistol or could have been a pistol?
Mr. Weiss. Could have been; that is correct.
Mr. Fauntroy. I guess my question, Mr. Chairman, now goes to
staff, Mr. Cornwell or Mr. Blakey, and that is, what do we know
about the alleged encounter with a person bearing Secret Service
credentials in the area of the grassy knoll?
589
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Fauntroy, the committee did look into that
incident and did what it could 15 years later to determine whether
it occurred and, if it occurred, could we identify the individual.
The testimony in essence is that an individual identified himself
by showing what he said to be Secret Service credentials behind
the picket fence, and based on that was allowed to continue.
A careful examination of where all of the Secret Service agents
were that day, and their duty assignments, indicates that no Secret
Service agent was in that area. And that is about as far as we have
been able to carry it.
Mr. Fauntroy. But who had the encounter?
Mr. Blakey. My memory is, a policeman, one of the first to come
up over the fence, ironically, with a gun drawn, encountered an
individual who, seeing the gun, identified himself as a Secret Serv-
ice agent and was thus able to pass on.
Mr. Fauntroy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired,
Mr. Fauntroy. I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman yields back the balance of his
time.
The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd.
Mr. Dodd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Dr. Weiss, for your testimony this morning.
In responding to Judge Preyer's question about the degree of
exactitude in your science of acoustics, has the science progressed
to such a significant note in the past 15 years that what you have
done could also have been done by the Warren Commission?
Mr. Weiss. Well, as a matter of fact, the science, insofar as what
I needed to know in order to do what I have done, was known long
before 15 years ago, so that it could have been done at that time,
yes, sir.
Mr. Dodd. What about the tests of Dr. Barger?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, those also.
Mr. Dodd. So there has been no appreciable improvement in the
science in 15 years that what you did or what Dr. Barger did would
have precluded the Warren Commission or someone conducting a
similar test in 1963 from reaching the same conclusions that you
have?
Mr. Weiss. Nothing that I know of. The only difference that I
recall is that in part of the work that Dr. Barger did, in order to
establish that there were no indications of shots earlier than the
timeframe indicated, he used a novel type of filtering technique to
remove the sound, to reduce the sound level of the motorcycle and
thereby hopefully expose impulse sounds similar to those that we
have observed in the region of the shot here.
That technique has been developed only in the last 15 years.
Mr. Dodd. You, in responding to Chairman Stokes and Mr.
Fauntroy, indicated that as a result of your assessment of these
wave forms you rule out the possibility of backfire as causing a
similar echo pattern. Is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. Well, not so much the echo pattern as the evidence of
a shockwave present, but also, as I indicated, that if there was
backfire it had to have been from the same location that I place
the shooter of the rifle.
3n-37‘l
O - 79 - 38
590
Mr. Dodd. My point is this: Are you excluding all other possible
noise patterns that could have produced a similar kind of wave
form that we see on your predicted response tape or that was
evident on the Dallas Police Department tape?
Mr. Weiss. If there are other kinds of sounds which resemble
sounds produced by a bullet in supersonic flight followed by the
sound of a muzzle blast, then they must, of course, be considered,
but I don't know that there is.
Mr. Dodd. Could you share with this committee what other possi-
ble noises could produce that sort of thing, other than a rifle or a
pistol?
Mr. Weiss. I don't know — that is the point I was trying to
reach — can I think of any that might resemble it,
Mr. Dodd. Was there any assessment made of other things that
might have been occurring at that time at Dealey Plaza which
could have produced that kind of noise pattern?
Mr. Weiss. I think somebody had once suggested a firecracker
being thrown, or something like that.
Mr. Dodd. Well, there was a train. I think we had evidence that
there was a freight train that was moving or present at the time in
Dealey Plaza. Could a train have done anything, cars backing into
each other?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir, they would not have produced this kind of
pattern.
Mr. Dodd. Let me ask you something and see if I have, after
listening to you — this is my third or fourth time, I think I am
beginning to understand some of the terminology.
Is this statement correct? Would the absence of any identifiable
pattern in the predicted response from the Dallas Police Depart-
ment tape, would that raise a serious question as to the authentic-
ity of the test, the absence of an identifiable pattern, and one from
the other?
Mr. Weiss, Well, the test is authentic, regardless. If I could not
find a pattern that matched sufficiently closely, I would only have
been able to conclude that we have not found proof either that this
is a shot that was recorded or that there was a microphone at that
location in Dealey Plaza.
Mr. Dodd. So it would raise questions, anyway, as not necessarily
to the authenticity of the test, but rather whether or not your
predicted response compared favorably to a certain degree of prob-
ability with the original tape?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. We could not make a statement that
there was a 95-percent probability of having identified a shot,
Mr. Dodd. Conversely, could we also say that the inclusion of a
wave form in the Dallas Police Department tape that it would have
been impossible to record on the predicted response recording,
would also raise serious questions?
Mr. Weiss. I'm not quite sure what you are asking.
Mr. Dodd. We have evidence that there was a Dallas Police
Department tape under, I guess it is exhibit F-355, the carillon bell
going off in Dealey Plaza. That is on the Dallas Police Department
tape.
To the best of our knowledge, there were no bells ringing in
Dealey Plaza at that time, November 22, 1963. How do we explain
591
the ringing of a carillon bell that would be impossible to record at
Dealey Plaza?
Mr. Weiss. Offhand, I really can't address that question, since I
didn't consider it in any detail when I was examining these data.
Mr. Dodd. As someone who is trained and provides expertise in
this area, my point is, can you have the sound of something that
could be impossible to be heard on a tape-recording and somehow
that be picked up some other place? Was it possible for another
policeman to have had his tape-recorder on at some other location?
Mr. Weiss. Yes; that is a possibility. I think Mr. Aschkenasy
wants to say something.
Mr. Aschkenasy. You are making an assumption that there was
a source of a bell in Dealey Plaza, but that is your assumption.
However, you have to look at the tape and the data on the tape a
little more carefully, and one can see there an indication of a
keying-on-transient which means that someone else tried to get
onto the channel at that very time. He may have been in position
to be close to a source of a carillon bell rather than anyone in
Dealey Plaza, because there is associated with that carillon bell
some indication of somebody else transmitting at the same time,
which puts it just equally as well outside of Dealey Plaza.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Dodd. Mr. Chairman, could I ask for unanimous consent just
to proceed for a couple of additional minutes?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, the gentleman is recog-
nized for 2 additional minutes.
Mr. Dodd. I realize that you are not an expert on police trans-
mitters, motorcycle transmitters, but to my knowle^e, anyway,
having looked into this a little bit, it would be impossible for — and
you correct me if I am wrong — but I am led to believe it would be
impossible for someone else to interrupt a transmission once there
is a transmission occurring.
Do you understand what I am saying?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Yes, What you mean to say is, if one guy has
the channel
Mr. Dodd. Has the channel open, it is impossible to break in?
Mr. Aschkenasy. It is not impossible to break. It is a question of
the strength of each individual transmitter and its relation to the
antenna that is receiving the transmission.
The one who has the stronger signal is the one who grabs the
channel, notwithstanding whether someone else is on the channel
at that time.
If I am coming in with a big 20-kilowatt signal, I will swamp
everybody else in sight.
Mr. Dodd. Then you are telling me it would be impossible to
record two sounds at the same time?
Mr. Aschkenasy. No.
Mr. Dodd. Or is it?
Mr. Weiss. No. As a matter of fact — let me respond to that one.
We sort of play ping-pong here. In fact, if you listen to the police
tape recording during the entire period of the so-called — the 5
minutes when the microphone on this motorcycle was accidentally
on, you can in fact hear other transmitters coming on. Most of
592
them failed insofar as all you hear is the microphone click and you
hear a kind of a chirp as they try to capture the channel.
But there are a number of times where you do hear other voices
coming on, other people communicating, sometimes very distorted
sounds of the voices, sometimes quite clear and intelligible; and it
is all during the time that this one transmitter has been on. In
fact, as you go on in time past the point at which the shots occur,
the ability of other transmitters to come into the channel becomes
increasingly — it occurs more frequently. You hear more people
coming in. You hear comments to the effect that somebody has his
microphone button stuck, and it is all audible and understandable,
so there are indeed several transmitters being received simulta-
neously during that period, and therefore it could very well have
been that there was another motorcycle who happened to key on at
just that point in time and picked up the sound of a bell some-
where.
Mr. Dodd. Let me try to conclude this, by asking you this,
though. Having said that, and using the expertise that you have in
acoustics, you, I think, said, Dr. Aschkenasy, that to have found a
sound that you developed in your predicted response in some place
other than Dealey Plaza, it would have been necessary to recon-
struct, in effect, Dealey Plaza in some other place?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Correct.
Mr. Dodd. So that even if that sound that we hear is the third or
fourth response, that would have only been able to have come,
based on your expertise and your tests, only could have come from
Dealey Plaza, unless you could have recreated Dealey Plaza?
Mr, Aschkenasy, Yes. Congressman Sawyer at that time asked
the question, if somebody were to tell me that the motorcycle was
not at Dealey Plaza — and he was in fact somewhere else and he
was transmitting from another location — my response to him at
that time was that I would ask to be told where that location is,
and once told where it is, I would go there, and one thing I would
expect to find is a replica of Dealey Plaza at that location. That is
the only way it can come out.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has again expired.
The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Fithian,
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Weiss, Chairman Stokes alluded earlier to some of the prob-
lems that your analysis will undoubtedly cause this committee, and
indeed cause history and people who look at this on down the way.
We may, in fact, be in the position of finally having raised more
serious questions than we answered as a committee.
We are particularly aware of the lateness in the life of this
committee, matched up with your findings. I suppose we could take
some comfort in the fact that you came up with your findings 3
weeks before, rather than 3 weeks after, we rendered our findings,
but I must, without being personal, now pursue some lines of
questioning which I think will be asked of us, and of you and of
your professional characteristics and findings, so please don't take
the initial questions at least, personally, but I think that they must
be asked.
593
When you and Mr. Aschkenasy entered into this series of math-
ematical and geometrical computations, did you set out with any
particular result desired?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir.
Mr. Aschkenasy. No, sir.
Mr. Weiss. We had no preconception as to what we were going to
find. If anything, when we first heard the tape recording and first
began to examine the data, our initial reaction was, somebody has
got to be kidding; this can’t be gunshots. But as we examined the
data more carefully, subjected it to all the tests that we have
described, the procedures that we have described, the results of the
analyses themselves convinced us of where we were heading.
Obviously, we did not have any plan or any objective other than
to do the best we could to find out what really these data repre-
sent.
Mr. Aschkenasy. If I may
Mr. Fithian. Yes, sir; go ahead.
Mr. Aschkenasy. If I may say just one line, it’s that the numbers
could not be refuted. That was our problem. The numbers just
came back again and again the same way, pointing only in one
direction, as to what these findings were. There just didn’t seem to
be any way to make those numbers go away, no matter how hard
we tried. It was not a question of interpretation of the numbers; it
was a question of what the analysis yielded, the mechanical analy-
sis, because it was just a hand calculator and a piece of string, as
you saw it, a tape measure, and it all just came out the same way.
Mr. Fithian. What were your instructions from the committee
staff when you set out to extend or refine Dr. Barger’s work?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Is there any way to take Dr. Barger’s state-
ment of 50-50 percent and move it off center either way?
Mr. Fithian. And so you are telling me that it really didn’t
matter to you which way it moved, that you were trying to get at
more certainty than a probability of 50-50?
Mr. Aschkenasy. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Fithian. Did you have any instructions from any member of
the committee, any suggestions, any recommended lines of pursuit,
that you should follow?
Mr. Aschkenasy. We were totally independent of the committee.
Mr. Fithian. Now during your testimony, Dr. Weiss, you stated
that the principles you employ are really basically very simple;
they are mathematical; they are a part of the physical sciences.
Has this technique been commonly employed in criminal investiga-
tions in recent years?
Mr. Weiss. I think, as I stated earlier, the only application of this
technique that comes to mind is the one in the instance of the
shootings at Kent State College, and in that analysis and investiga-
tion the technique was developed originally by Dr. Barger.
Mr. Fithian. Then we are in a pretty small circle, the two of you
and Dr. Barger and his firm, in what must be a much larger field,
that is, the field of acoustics.
Are we saying, then, that this whole thing is really rather novel,
that is, the application of acoustical principles to criminalistics, if
you will?
594
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir; the application is novel in this area, perhaps
because these are first times that questions of this sort have been
raised, that is, ''Given sounds on a tape which may or may not be a
gunshot, can you identify what it was, and if so, can you tell where
the gun was fired from or where the microphone was listening?''
I don't know if that question had ever been raised before Kent
State, and for that matter how many times it has been raised since
then.
Mr. Fithian. I realize criminalistics and so forth is not your
profession, but as far as you know this is the first application of
the principles of acoustics to ascertain the precise origin of a
gunshot?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Aschkenasy. Congressman, if I may give you an analogy to
that, it is almost like taking a wheel and putting it either on a
bicycle, or on something newer than that, on a car. It is the same
wheel. Principles of a pneumatic wheel of a tire, are the same for
both, and they are basically simple and basically straightforward
and incontrovertible, those principles, and yet there was one appli-
cation before, and now you have another application which is new;
but the results of the game are the same.
Mr. Fithian. Now I want to clarify in my own mind the distinc-
tion between your work and Dr. Barger's, and I have some addi-
tional questions on that which will come a little later; but if I
understand you correctly, you did not, in fact, analyze the nature
of the impulses, that is, you weren't working with filtering systems
and the like to get rid of the extra noise. You were only working
with the output of Dr. Barger's work in that area; is that correct?
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Is the gentleman seeking additional time?
Mr. Fithian. I seek additional recognition for two additional
minutes.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, the gentleman is recog-
nized for two additional minutes.
Mr. Aschkenasy. Congressman, our input to this process were
two tapes, basically, the tape of the test shots in Dallas in August
and the other one was a high quality copy of the Dallas police tape
recording in its pristine, natural form, without any filtering what-
soever, and that is what you actually see on that exhibit. That is
from the Dallas police tape recording.
Mr. Fithian. To refine my question somewhat, as I understand,
Dr. Weiss, the only additional analysis you made other than the
mathematical computations with measurements and moving those
around until you got a match was the possibility of sound alter-
ation by the windshield of the bicycle or the motorbike?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir; that is correct.
Mr. Fithian. So that that was the limited area of your analysis
of the impulse or impulses on the Dallas P.D. tape; is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. That is right, sir.
Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman, I think my other questions can be
grouped together a little later.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Edgar.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
595
Mr. Chairman, before I begin my questioning I would like to
simply state that the questions that I am about to ask have been
shaped and assisted by several people who have come and attempt-
ed to help me with this. The first is Dr, Arthur Lord, who is sitting
behind me, who is a professor at Drexel University and has exten-
sive background in ultrasonics and acoustics. And also in the audi-
ence we have Dr. Francis Davis, who is the dean of science at
Drexel University, and a fellow in the American Meteorological
Society; and also Dr. Marvin Wolfgang, who is a criminologist and
a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
These three gentlemen, at my request, came and reviewed the
testimony which you gave a week ago, as well as the testimony
that was presented to the committee back in September by Dr.
Barger; and they have assisted me in asking, I think, some ques-
tions that are a little bit more technical and perhaps different from
the questions previously asked; and they start with the whole
question of temperature.
When asked about this previously this morning, you had indicat-
ed, I believe, that you received the temperature data that you took
into consideration from the committee staff; is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Edgar. Did you feel that the use of temperature was not
that important to the findings of this particular study?
Mr. Weiss. No; it was important to know approximately what the
temperature was. The precise knowledge is not that important
because the effect is not that great. We, for example, took into
account the temperature of Dealey Plaza at the time that Dr.
Barger’s experiment was being performed and particularly at the
time the shot was fired from the grassy knoll that was recorded by
microphone 4, and that was known to be about 90"* F. at that time.
It was very near at the end of his tests and they had been noticing
what the temperature was as the tests progressed.
Now at that temperature the velocity of sound in air is about
1,150 feet per second. By contrast, the temperature on November
22, 1963, was given to me as 65°, and the velocity of sound in air
corresponding to that temperature is 1,123 feet per second; there-
fore, there is approximately a 27-feet-per-second increment over a
roughly 25° F. change, or approximately 1 foot per second per
degree.
Had there been a, say, 5° or so difference from the 65° I was
quoted, it would have affected the calculations slightly, but not
seriously, and certainly not affected them significantly for the ear-
liest arriving or the earlier arriving set of echoes, but only for the
really late echoes.
Mr. Edgar. The temperature that you determined in November
of 1963, you said was 65°?
Mr. Weiss. That is what I was told, yes.
Mr. Edgar. Do you know where they determined that tempera-
ture?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir; I do not.
Mr. Edgar. So there really was no accurate way of determining
the exact temperature in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassina-
tion, other than statements that were given to you; is that correct?
596
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. I would again, however, assume that
if the temperature were quoted as 65^ measured at one place, then
it would not be likely to be more than, say, 5” higher at another
place in the immediate vicinity.
Mr. Edgar. Well, let's make the assumption that they called the
Weather Bureau and asked what's the exact weather on that par-
ticular day; the Weather Bureau presumably would have taken a
look at their records, taken at a temperature gauge somewhere
near the airport where their findings would have been taken, and
if we just have that as an average temperature for the city of
Dallas at that time, you drew on the map with your string and pins
straight lines from the point of the presumed shot to the point of
the microphone, and also straight lines to the point of the echoes.
That was assuming that at the muzzleblast sound, concentric cir-
cles went out similar to throwing a rock or a pebble into a creek or
pond, and those ripples went out in even circles.
Couldn't temperature have affected the time it took for the
sound to have in fact reached the microphone or to have in fact hit
the corner of a building and bounced back to the microphone
where it was being received?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Well, as we mentioned earlier, Congressman,
we had received this temperature of 65° from the committee staff.
We assumed that they had done their homework as to getting the
temperature that was actually measured on that day. However, as
Professor Weiss also just pointed out, is that the difference of
temperature — it does, of course — it does affect, because we see that
on the day of the experiment the temperature was 90°, and at the
day of — on November 22, 1963 — was 65°, and the tables give you
two different speeds for the velocity of sound, one 1,123 at the
lower temperature, and 1,150.
If we just take a linear extrapolation between those two numbers
and we say that instead of being 65° on November 22, maybe close
to 70°, so instead of 1,123, we have measured 1,128 feet per second.
Now what does that mean? A change of 5 over 1,100 approxi-
mately, a change of a half a percent. Now half a percent change
would not affect our measurements because we did not know the
accuracy of the map that we have. Was it accurate to a half
percent? As a matter of fact, we discovered in looking at photo-
graphs and looking at the map that some of the details there were
actually not correct.
So this is why we assumed that the 65° was a good, reasonable,
ballpark figure, since. No. 1, it was given by the committee staff,
and No. 2, distances over which we were measuring echoes, the
distances are not miles; the distances are only hundreds of feet,
and in 100 feet, half a percent of error is hardly measurable in
terms of our measurement; and this is basically the thought proc-
esses that we followed.
Mr. Edgar. In the first part of your comment you said it affected
the later echoes; is that correct?
Mr. Aschkenasy. It may have affected the later echoes, but the
measurement of those later echoes is not that much later in rela-
tion to the earlier echoes. Everything occurs here within approxi-
mately three-tenths of a second, the whole echo pattern.
597
Mr. Edgar. But how would that have affected your 95 percent
certainty that you have just talked about?
Mr. Aschkenasy. We said 95 percent or better; so it would have
made the “better"’ a little bit smaller.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman, I will not ask unanimous consent for
5 additional minutes if it is understood that we are going to a
second and a third round of questions at this time.
Chairman Stokes. We will continue as long as the committee has
questions.
Mr. Edgar. I will come back to this question.
Chairman Stokes. Professor Weiss, let me ask you this: The
bullet from the grassy knoll, do we know where it went?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir, we do not.
Chairman Stokes. And do we know the speed of the bullet?
Mr. Weiss. No, we do not know that either.
Chairman Stokes. Can you tell us, then, why we do not know
those things about the bullet from grassy knoll?
Mr. Weiss. Well, because the data won’t permit us to determine
it. All we know from the data is that there appears to be a
shockwave impulse that precedes a muzzle blast sound by some
number of milliseconds. I believe the number is actually 24 milli-
seconds.
Now if you knew — you have to know two things in order to find
a third in this sort of situation — you have to know the direction in
which the bullet was fired, and you need to know the muzzle
velocity in order to be able to determine where the bullet’s flight
terminated.
Alternatively, if you knew where it terminated and knew where
it was aimed, you could determine its velocity. Or, if you knew
where it terminated and you knew what its velocity was, you could
then determine where it was aimed.
But, you see, there are three unknowns that we are dealing with,
and we only have one fact, and there is simply no way to be able to
resolve the ambiguity here.
Chairman Stokes. So, for our purposes, we would be in the
position of not knowing whether the bullet was fired straight up in
the air or toward the limousine, or back away from
Mr. Weiss. That is not quite correct, sir. We can say that the
bullet was not fired straight up in the air because had it been, you
would not have received a shockwave impulse at that microphone
position; and, indeed, if it had been fired in a direction reverse to
that of the limousine, you also would not have received a shock-
wave impulse.
Chairman Stokes. Then you are able to say, then, that the bullet
would have been fired in the vicinity of the limousine?
Mr. Weiss. Well, one could say it was fired in the general direc-
tion of it. That could mean something well in front of it and
something well behind it, as well as right at it.
Chairman Stokes. What happened to it after that we have no
way of knowing?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir, we do not.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you.
The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Preyer.
598
Mr. Preyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Along the lines that Mr. Edgar was questioning you concerning
assumptions that may have been made about the scene and how
they may affect your calculations, you mentioned when you were
discussing the original assumptions you made that the tape record-
er on the Dallas police vehicle was 5 percent slow. I wonder if you
could discuss that a little bit and tell us, one, how do you know it
was 5 percent slow, and, two, how important is it, what difference
does it make, that we be accurate about that?
Mr. Weiss. As a matter of fact, we know that it is 5 percent or
approximately 5 percent slow from the time analysis done by Dr.
Barger, these data having been presented to the committee during
the open hearing in September when he discussed this factor. He
did this by extrapolating a straight line to fit the time announce-
ments made by the dispatcher on channel 1, which is the channel
on which these data were recorded, and found that its slope was
about 5 percent or something in that vicinity.
Now this affects measurements in the following way: If the tape
was, in fact, recorded slowly, then it would be played back — and we
played it back on equipment that we believe plays at true tape
speed as indicated — then if it was recorded slowly, events occur-
ring, let us say, 1 second apart, when you play it back on a
machine that plays a tape more quickly, will occur in an interval
of less than 1 second. If you then make a measurement and forget
that the tape may not have been recorded at the correct speed, you
are in error; so you have to adjust the observed spacing between
events, the events being impulses, for example, that you correct
them to determine what they really should be or in fact were at
the time that the recording was made.
Now this adjustment of 5 percent is only an approximate one. In
fact, it was altered slightly during our analyses as we found it
necessary to alter it, so that the data fell in a little bit better and a
little bit more meaningfully. We checked with Dr. Barger on the
validity of doing this, and his opinion was there is absolutely no
reason that it could not have been done that way, that in fact the
fit that he had was over an average of a number of minutes, and
that the Dictabelt itself was not notorious for holding constant
speed, so that its speed could have been varying by a minute
amount during this period of time, so a small upward or downward
adjustment was perfectly valid.
It therefore was necessary to make such an adjustment in order
to find what the correct interval spacing was, or our best guess at
what it was.
Mr. Preyer. I get the impression that the fit, the match, deter-
mined the tape speed, rather than the tape speed having much
effect or influence on the match?
Mr. Weiss. No, because the adjustment that is necessary is only a
small one. If it were a matter of saying, well, 1 have to slow this
tape, or I have to speed this tape up, by, say, 20 percent, or slow it
down by 25 percent, then it would have been a situation of that
sort.
The trim was a very small amount around the estimate that had
been made by Dr. Barger in the first place. For that matter —
599
actually, the adjustment was — instead of using 5 percent, we used
4,3 percent.
Mr. Preyer. If I might just ask one other question, Mr. Chair-
man, in another area.
You mentioned that this involves a new application of old and
incontrovertible principles, and that the Kent State was the first
application of the new techniques; and I gather it was the first
application of the new technique which would rule out low level
sound so that you would be able to hear the higher level sound?
Mr. Weiss. Not in the work that we did. We did not actually use
any technique for suppressing low-level sounds. We just took the
tape exactly as it had been recorded and analyzed it that way.
Mr. Preyer. My question that I wanted to get at was: Was your
analysis, or any acoustic analysis from experts, admitted into evi-
dence at any of the Kent State hearings or trials?
Mr. Weiss. Tm not sure what the results of that analysis were. I
think Dr. Barger would be better able to answer that question.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Weiss, I donT know how closely related are the science of
acoustics and ballistics, but wouldn't it be a fact that muzzle veloc-
ity from a rifle would exceed the speed of sound?
Mr. Weiss. For most rifle bullets I believe that is true, yes.
Mr. Devine. Therefore, the bullet or the projectile would prob-
ably arrive at the target before the sound would be heard by people
at the target area?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct.
Mr. Devine. Therefore, in order to coordinate the Zapruder film
with the dispatcher's tape of the broadcast on the motorcycle and
the Dr. Barger acoustics studies, you would have to take into
consideration the sound-impact lag, would it not?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct. It would depend entirely upon what
you were trying to relate. If you wish to relate the moment at
which an impact might have occurred, you might get one set of
relationships or adjustments. If you wanted to, however, synchro-
nize — if that is the idea — sound and film to what would have been
heard in the automobile, then you might get a slightly different,
but only a slightly different, set of synchronizations.
Mr. Devine. Of course, the picking up of the sound from differ-
ent areas would be different than at the target area itself?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, absolutely correct.
Mr. Devine. Let me just finally comment that I have had some
experience with expert witnesses in the medical field and psychiat-
ric field and the ballistics field and the fingerprint field and so
forth. Wouldn't you agree, those of you that are engaged in expert
opinion testimony, that reasonable minds can reach different con-
clusions from the same set of facts?
Mr. Weiss. Well, if the facts can bear alternative interpretations,
yes, that would be true, they can. The only question, I think, would
be relating to the premises on which the facts may have been
based.
Mr. Devine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
600
The gentleman from the District of Columbia, Mr. Fauntroy.
Mr. Fauntroy. Mr. Weiss, you have on several occasions indicat-
ed that there was, in fact, no new electronic equipment utilized by
you to establish these facts?
Mr. Weiss. That is fundamentally true; yes, sir.
Mr. Fauntroy. Therefore, we need not look for an analysis of
how reliable the new equipment you used is, because you didn’t use
any?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Fauntroy. Mr. Chairman, I just have one question, and that
question is of staff; therefore, I would like staff to tell us the source
of the 65-degree temperature determination which was provided
the team here.
Chairman Stokes. Professor Blakey, do you want to reply to
that?
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, I obviously would be corrected by
the record and if my memory today is like it is normally, it is
probably in error. My memory is that we got it from the Weather
Bureau, which, of course, keeps relatively accurate temperatures;
and they differentiated the temperature in various areas, and we
took the one that was the closest to Dealey Plaza.
If that is wrong, I will stand corrected and bring it to the
attention of the committee as soon as possible and insert it in the
record.
I might add just a comment, and perhaps I could do it in the
form of a question so that I am not in the position of inserting
something in the record:
Professor Weiss, if you would comment on the following hypo-
thetical: If you knew where the gun was, if you knew the muzzle
velocity of the gun, and you knew where it hit, and you had a
recording, could you determine the temperature of the air?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir.
Mr. Aschkenasy. Yes, sir.
Mr. Blakey. If it is true from extrinsic data, apart from the
acoustic study, that we know those factors about, one, the first
shot, the second shot and the fourth shot, then the temperature in
the air at Dealey Plaza could be determined by the known shots
that had been related by the medical and ballistics neutron activa-
tion analysis of Lee Harvey Oswald’s gun, couldn’t we? It is a
possibility; is that correct?
Mr. Aschkenasy. That is correct, except that you have to re-
member that when you hypothesize you are hypothesizing labora-
tory-ideal conditions which do not exist in the real world.
Mr. Blakey. Did you gentlemen make that determination?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir, we did not.
Mr. Blakey. How difficult would it be to do so?
Mr. Weiss. From the data that are available, I don’t know.
Mr. Blakey. I wonder if you could supplement your testimony at
this point with a letter telling us what mathematically the tem-
perature of the air had to have been at Dealey Plaza based on an
analysis of shots one, two, and four?
Mr. Weiss. That would require, for example, redetermining the
locations of the echo-generating surfaces for the position from the
601
sixth floor window of the depository building, and that will take
some time to do.
Mr. Aschkenasy. It isn't easy.
Mr. Blakey. But it is a mechanical possibility?
Mr. Weiss. It is a doable thing.
Mr. Blakey. Thank you.
Mr. Fauntroy. Mr. Chairman, I want to be sure that I under-
stand the answer to counsel's question. We know that the second
shot struck President Kennedy somewhere behind the sign on the
film. You can determine the distance roughly between the middle
of that sign and the sixth floor window, can you not?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Those who are expert at doing that sort of
thing can.
Mr. Fauntroy. You drew me a line a minute ago.
Mr. Weiss. One can determine the distance, yes.
Mr. Fauntroy. The question, therefore, is, if you know where the
shot emanated and where it struck, if you took the time, could you
determine the temperature? And the answer is?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, you could.
Mr. Fauntroy. Thank you.
Mr. Weiss. I was going to add another comment apropos of the
precision of knowing the temperature. Since the effect of a vari-
ation in the temperature is slight, is that its only primary effect in
fact in this set of calculations, will be to move the position, the
initial position, of the motorcycle at the start of, relative to the
point at which it is now, too, so that it might be either a little bit
closer or a little bit further from the rifle at the time it first
receives the muzzleblast sound? For example, if the temperature is,
say, 5 degrees warmer, then as Mr. Aschkenasy pointed out, the
effect will be a one-half of 1 percent adjustment. In fact, that
adjustment can be applied quite easily to the position of the motor-
cycle. The motorcycle in that estimation is something like 200 feet
away from the grassy knoll area, which would mean moving it by 1
additional foot forward or backward, whichever way.
Mr. Edgar. Would the gentleman yield?
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Edgar. I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman have 1
additional minute.
Mr. Fauntroy. I ask it, too, and I yield that minute to the
gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, the gentleman may have 1
additional minute.
Mr. Edgar. What is the statistical evidence that atmospherically
your temperature is not off by more than 5?
Mr. Weiss. I have no idea, sir.
Mr. Edgar. If it is off by 10 percent, doesn't that affect
Mr. Weiss. Then there would be a net 1-percent change in the
velocity of sound, and I have to move the motorcycle not by 1 foot
but by 2 feet to compensate. That is the total effect, sir.
Mr. Edgar. But doesn't that affect the number of millisecond
signals that you use?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir. It simply means that the starting position of
the motorcycle has been moved. If I had to move him 10 feet
602
forward, then I probably could not get a decent match anymore.
But that would probably be a 100-percent error in the temperature.
Mr. Edgar. Are you 95 percent sure that the temperature was
within the 5- to 10-percent difference that we are talking about, 5-
to 10-degree difference?
Mr. Aschkenasy. We had no reason to doubt the committee staff
in getting the correct answer to the question that we put to them.
We explained to them that it was important to know what the
temperature was on November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza. This is
the number that they came back with. Now whether there was any
error intentional or unintentional on their part, right now we have
to make the statement that it was never taken into consideration
that there may be an error in that number.
Mr. Edgar. I yield back.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd.
Mr. Dodd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just following up on this point because, as I understood it, you
made adjustments not just for temperature but you made them as
well for the location of the receiver, the location of the alleged fire
of the gun. Apparently, and I may have misheard you, but you also
discovered some incorrect location in the map, itself, that apparent-
ly you had to make some adjustments for as well; is that correct?
Mr. Aschkenasy. We did not make any adjustments. We just
noticed that the map was not an exact survey. For example, the
vertical, as is shown there in the lower right-hand corner in the
photograph, shows evenly spaced columns. The map we were given
by committee staff did not show evenly spaced columns. Columns
could be echo sources. In this case they were not, but this came to
our attention. We want to point out it was not perfect.
Mr. Dodd. What Fm getting at is this. Assuming that any error
that may have existed in temperature would be minimal, do you
believe that a reenactment of it, of what occurred in Dealey Plaza,
placing a person firing a rifle at exactly the location that you
adjusted for, having a tape recorder going at exactly the same
speed that the recorder was allegedly going on November 22, 1963,
and exactly accounting for the adjustments that were made in the
motorcycle, do you think that would in any way possibly narrow
your prediction down even further? Would it be worthwhile, in
other words?
Mr. Weiss. No; I believe all that would happen if you trotted a
motorcycle down the street with a microphone receiving the
sounds, that you would, in fact, come up with a set of echoes that
would very closely match the set that has been predicted.
Mr. Dodd. With regard to the placement of the firing person on
the grassy knoll, to what degree of error do you allow? We have
discussed this before in executive session, and I tried to recall your
response. It seems to me you talked about 5 feet, a radius of 5 feet.
Mr. Weiss. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. Are you suggesting that if we, one, move that firer by
10 feet or more from where you placed him, that that would throw
off the pattern significantly, that the probability that you have
arrived at here would diminish significantly?
603
Mr. Weiss. Depending upon how you moved the shooter, you
would affect one or another or several of the predicted echoes and,
of course, depending upon how far you moved him. Now, if the
movement is a small amount, let's say 5 feet along the line of the
fence, then you can compensate for that adequately by moving the
motorcycle a little bit and still get a pattern that will match. It
may not match as close as plus or minus one one-thousandth of a
second. It might be IV 2 thousandths of a second. If you start
moving the shooter significantly greater distances
Mr. Dodd. What do you mean by significantly?
Mr. Weiss. Ten to 20 feet from where I have it now; then the
likelihood is that one after another of these echoes will fail to be
matched by any reasonable pattern.
Mr. Dodd. Mr. Blakey, do we have a graph of the grassy knoll at
all? Do we have any evidence that blows that up at all? Could you
explain on the blackboard and draw a little picture of the area in
which we placed the fireman, the rifleman, in the grassy knoll?
Mr. Weiss. You mean in terms of what you would see if you were
standing there, actually a photograph sort of thing?
Mr. Blakey. I didn't understand the question. There is an exhibit
already in the record. I believe it is No. 155 that shows the fence
from the ground level. He would be able to indicate from there.
Mr. Dodd. Is it from behind the fence?
Mr. Blakey. In front of the fence.
Mr. Dodd. Maybe the blackboard would be better, it might be
more graphic, and you can place it more clearly. Could you draw
the fence as you would perceive it, looking out onto Dealey Plaza,
and then place the rifleman in a spot where you think he would
have had to fire from?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Just to refer you to this map here, here is what
is shown as the 5-foot high wooden fence. It runs in this direction
approximately north-south and approximately east-west. I will just
reproduce it larger.
Mr. Dodd. That would be helpful.
Mr. Aschkenasy. This is what I pointed out before, and we show,
if we take a scale of 1 inch — let's say this is 10 feet — 1 inch equals
10 feet. This piece of chalk equals 10 feet, and we originally placed
him here, 8 feet from the corner.
Mr. Dodd. Going along the fence.
Mr. Aschkenasy. Running along the fence, since this represents
8 feet, we say we could move him within 5 feet of this location,
from here to here, and get a reasonable match, still.
Mr. Dodd. Where would be the direction of the highway or the
motorcade?
Mr. Aschkenasy. The motorcade is coming down here on Elm
Street, right here.
Mr. Dodd. And your margin of error would be anything beyond
10 feet you start having difficulties?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Yes; then you put him already on the other
side of the crux and the position begins to change, or you put him
further out here. We certainly would have to exclude this region
here because he would not want to be visible. If we put him too far
back here, he would not be able to see down to the limousine,
which is below his level.
604
Mr. Dodd. I am talking just from an acoustical assessment. Then
you would have difficulty with the degree of probability?
Mr. Aschkenasy. That is right.
Mr. Dodd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired. The
gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. I was about to ask chief counsel or one of the
members of the staff, as I recall way back when we had a photo-
graph that the photographic panel was working with and there was
a linear object behind the wall. I was wondering if, though that is
not very conclusive evidence, if that linear object and that unde-
fined object is roughly what we are talking about here.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Fithian, again the record will correct me if my
memory is wrong — we analyzed two places, photographed to deter-
mine if something could be seen. The photographic panel indicated
that the area on the fence, which was one possible one, was not
profitable. We could not get anything out of it. Consequently, addi-
tional work was not done on it. The photograph we analyzed in
some detail in the hearing was of a possible person and a linear
object behind the concrete abutment and not behind the picket
fence. I might ask, Mr. Chairman, that exhibit F-155 be displayed
at this point, and this is just moments before the assassination, and
I would direct the committee’s attention to the arrow pointing at
the President’s head. If the committee would look up and slightly
to the left, you will see the cement colored area and above it, you
will see the outlines of the picket fence. This is the concrete abut-
ment, and this is the approximate area where an analysis was
made previously. This is the line of the wooden picket fence. It
extends in this direction back, and this is the area that is shown
from the other side if we would refer again to the larger aerial
photograph of Dealey Plaza; this is the picket fence coming this
way and back over; and the line of fire, assuming a shot did occur
from the grassy knoll, would be down in this direction. As in this
situation, it would be down in this direction, coming from the
picket fence down toward the car. So this could give you a visual
image of what happened.
Mr. Fithian. The picket fence is some feet behind the concrete
wall?
Mr. Blakey. That is correct.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you. Dr. Weiss, I want to pursue in this
particular round of questioning the nature of the receiver and its
ability to determine and therefore turn out the kind of shape that
you worked with. If I remember Dr. Barger’s testimony correctly
before the committee in September, I was just going back through
the documents, and I can find several references to it which I could
read to you if you would like, but basically what he said was that
given the limited nature or capacity of the motorcycle radio, that it
did not indeed transmit the full picture of a very, very loud sound,
that is, it attenuated or modified that sound simply because it
could not accommodate that much of an impulse. Are you familiar
with that particular problem that we ran into?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, I am.
605
Mr. Fithian. Now, does that problem pose any significance for
you in the kind of mathematical extension that you made on shot
No. 3?
Mr. Weiss. No, it does not affect the time at which an impulse
will occur, only the amplitude or strength with which it is ob-
served.
Mr. Fithian. Well, then, let me ask it another way. You were
concerned about the alteration of the nature of the impulse by the
windshield of the motorcycle?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, only insofar as it is another means of
observing a consistency between what is seen in the pattern and
what is expected to be seen based upon both theory and experi-
ment, that is, that the leading edge is much smaller than the cycle
that immediately follows it. In reality, when a muzzle blast occurs,
that leading edge is very much larger than the cycle that will
follow it. There are two things that are reducing it as we observe it
here. The first is the effect of the windshield, and the second is the
effect of the compression caused by limiting action in the micro-
phone and transmitter and almost certainly in the receiver and
recorder as well.
Mr. Fithian. Does that in any way call into question the identifi-
cation of the sound, itself, as that which reflects a gunshot from a
rifle?
Mr. Weiss. Not seriously. Well, in effect, actually, rather than
contradicting it, in a sense it supports it because all we see is all
explainable and consistent with what we should expect to see if we
take into account all the factors of the situation.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you. One other area that I am concerned
about, as I was concerned in September in my own questioning of
Dr. Barger, and that had to do with what he called false alarms. Is
that term familiar to you?
Mr. Weiss. Yes, sir.
Mr. Fithian. As I understand it, to go back again and find some
indications of this in Dr. Barger's testimony, but as I understand it,
the reason he could not come up with a greater probability that
there was a fourth shot was in part, at least, due to the possibility
of false alarms being generated in the various noises. I guess what
I am curious to know is how you eliminated those false alarms that
were reducing Dr. Barger's probability estimate?
Mr. Weiss. The elimination, in fact, is a byproduct of the ability
to narrow the window down from 12 milliseconds wide to only 2
milliseconds wide. By so doing, it is possible to now predict that the
probability of a noise occurrence matching this closely is signifi-
cantly reduced and indeed reduced below the 5 percent level that I
have mentioned.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Fithian. Let me just for the record, Mr. Chairman, well
perhaps more properly pursue this with Dr. Barger, but on page 68-
69 of the transcript. Dr. Barger answers in part:
Therefore it would not be unreasonable to expect that approximately 5 of the
remaining 10 correlations were also false alarms. That would indicate that about
one-half of the detections that I did not previously indicate to be false alarms, about
one-half of the remaining 10, are false alarms. This would indicate that the prob-
ability that each one is a correct detection is about one-half.
35-37'! O - T-! - 3*!
606
From that he went on to the 50-50 probability. Now, do I under-
stand you correctly in that you are saying that simply by narrow-
ing down the window, as you use the term, narrowing down the
area
Mr. Aschkenasy. It is the uncertainty window.
Mr. Fithian. The uncertainty window to a very narrow space in
numbers of feet and whatever other uncertainties you went into,
that it is in that process that you reduce the probability of false
alarm?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, sir.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired. The
gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Edgar.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for a moment, I
would like to go back to one of your previous answers in reference
to the temperature. You had indicated that if the temperature was
off by 10°, that that would necessitate your simply moving the
motorcycle plus or minus 2 feet; is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. I believe so. I really would want to do the calculation
before answering that firmly, but it is probably correct.
Mr. Edgar. Isn't that somewhat of an oversimplification of the
process? Wouldn't you also have to go back and redo the calcula-
tions of all the echoes that are coming off of the buildings?
Mr. Weiss. That is correct; for a 1-foot movement it would shift
the other echoes, but, remember, it would also shift the time of the
travel of sound from the source to those points. For example,
supposing that the temperature was warmer by some number of
degrees, which means the sound would travel faster and all sounds
would be received at the microphone sooner, well, the echoes would
come in sooner, for sure, but so would the direct muzzle blast come
in sooner. This is a kind of self-compensating process. It doesn't
compensate exactly and in order to find the correct compensation,
you have to move the motorcycle a little bit. Remember, we are
dealing with a difference in time of arrival between the direct
muzzle blast and the echo, not the absolute time of arrival of these
events. This difference becomes somewhat less sensitive to tem-
peratures than each of the events, themselves.
Mr. Edgar. I have been given a piece of paper that indicates that
on November 22, 1963, at the tower of the Texas Book Depository,
they actually had a temperature of 68° signaled at the top of it.
Evidently this is backed up by some pictures. It has not been
determined where that particular temperature had been derived
from or determined in order to put it up on the tower. It also does
not take into account the differing temperatures that might occur
at the ground level or toward the tree area as opposed to next to a
building where temperatures could vary. Is it your experience that
in situations like this that temperature just doesn't vary that
much?
Mr. Weiss. If we are dealing with a temperature variation of
only 3°, for example, from what I have reported, the effect on the
calculations would be negligible. As far as experience of tempera-
ture variations of a grassy area as opposed to a building, I have no
experience there. But if we are dealing with temperature vari-
ations that are not of a large range, then the chances are it would
have negligible effect. The sound goes to the building and then
607
comes away from the building again, so it is affected only as it
approaches the building closely and as it leaves the building close-
ly. Once it’s out in the street, if we are out of the building range, in
a normal temperature range it’s going to be, in the main, near the
average temperature of the area.
Mr. Edgar. As I listened to your testimony this morning, it
occurs to me that what you are sharing with us is a very well done
analysis that is, in a sense, done in a test tube; that is, your
calculations are made with basic science tools, basic skills that
have been known for a long period of time. You were given by Dr,
Barger the set of parameters around which you were to look, and
that namely the third shot, and you have been able to calculate in
an office, apart from Dealey Plaza, the echo pattern off of buildings
that you had some approximate knowledge of where they were.
You don’t have the exact knowledge of the exact angle at which
the echoes are leaving the building; is that correct?
Mr. Weiss. If one makes an assumption as to where the motorcy-
cle is, you have an exact knowledge of what the angle is, if you can
believe the topographic survey map. You can easily calculate the
angle, if that is necessary, but the angle is not an important
consideration because it does not affect the time of travel of sound.
It will affect, to some degree, the strength of the echo as we see at
a particular point, but not its time of travel.
Mr. Edgar. But essentially you were using a test-tube setting in
order to come up with the calculations. While temperature was
important, it was not that important. I would assume that you
would say while wind might be a factor, it was not that important.
Aren’t there a number of variables like wind, temperature, number
of people, number of cars, number of objects in Dealey Plaza that
might have some effect on your calculations?
Mr. Weiss. In answering that, I would like to start with a quote
that we have pasted to the wall in our office to the effect that the
only difference between theory and practice is that in practice you
can ignore nothing, you can leave out nothing. This is what we
very strenuously tried to do in performing this calculation, recog-
nizing that one could easily get into a test-tube situation by forget-
ting effects or by not estimating what these effects are going to be
or can be. This is why we did take the trouble of taking into
account the temperature, as a matter of fact, and to be concerned
about other effects as well. It is our belief that we have, in fact,
accounted for all of the things that can really significantly — and by
significantly, I mean can affect the accuracy of the prediction, by
significantly, I mean prevent us from finding a pattern that match-
es it within the kind of window we are talking about. As far as the
effect of other people are concerned, and there certainly were
plenty of people in the street at the time, they are not going to
particularly affect the time of arrival of echoes received from the
hard surfaces in the environment there. The walls of the building
will still receive and reflect sounds. The people there can perhaps
affect the strength of some of these sounds, but they are not going
to greatly alter the time of arrival. Now, this understanding is not
only ours. We, in fact, corroborated it by talking with other acous-
tics experts, and they agreed on this.
608
Mr. Edgar. It is my understanding that due to the short time
interval between shot No. 3 and shot No. 4, approximately 0.5 to
0.7 seconds, the possibility of an acoustical mirage should be consid-
ered as a possible explanation. Perhaps the most common illustra-
tion of the effect of an acoustical mirage is the optical mirage we
see riding along a highway, and we look on the distance and see
wet pavement, and when we get to the spot, we find it is not wet
pavement, but a trick on our eyes. The phenomenon of an acousti-
cal mirage, which I believe is called refraction or bending, is it
possible that the closeness of the two shots, No. 3 and No. 4, could
have, in fact, come from the same muzzle blast and could, in fact,
be an acoustical mirage, a reflection, a bending off of the sound
patterns, or a different approach of the sound to the microphone?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir; because in order for that to be true, you
would have to, in effect, have had the sound of the muzzle blast
transported by some means to the location of the grassy knoll area,
and there emitted as if it had originated from that point. Since
every echo that was predicted corresponded to an echo arising from
a sound rising from that location, what you would have required is
that echoes otherwise generated from a shot fired, say, from the
depository window, would each have had its own peculiar distor-
tion, transmission, characteristics such that by some marvelous
process it occurred at the microphone, intact, and at the correct
position. Second: As far as I understand acoustical ducting, which
is what you are referring to, these things occur over very much
greater distances than a few hundred feet as we are observing
here. So I don't think that sort of phenomenon could have account-
ed for these two shots.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired. Are
there further members seeking further recognition?
The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Weiss, when you performed the test on the Harley Davidson
with the New York Police Department, did you discover any char-
acteristics that might help us understand why the officer inadvert-
ently had the microphone on?
Mr. Weiss. Yes. I think Mr. Aschkenasy can answer.
Mr. Aschkenasy. I am certainly glad you asked that question. At
the time we conducted those tests, there was an officer who had
been a member of the motorcycle police force in New York City for
quite awhile. Once he saw we were playing around with the micro-
phone and radio, and he was assisting in turning on the motorcycle
and turning it off at our directions, he let on as to how many times
that stupid microphone would go on every time he pulled the brake
cable because the brake cable passed within a half inch of the
microphone button that activates the microphone button, enabling
it to transmit. That was a totally voluntary comment on his part
which indicated to us that indeed it is possible inadvertently for a
microphone to transmit without the rider being aware of it.
Mr. Fithian. The second question: Were there any changes in
Dealey Plaza between 1963 and 1978 which altered the echo pat-
tern?
609
Mr. Weiss. Not that 1 know of. We compared photographs and
maps, aerial photographs, land maps, et cetera. All of the surfaces
that we have considered are intact since 1963.
Mr. Fithian. The reason I ask the question is that if I remember
Dr. Barger’s testimony, they had to move one of the targets a bit
because of the new freeway sign that does appear very, very
close
Mr. Weiss. That is correct, but, in fact, none of the echoes — well,
insofar as that overhead sign, since it was not there in 1963, it
could not have caused an echo in 1963.
Mr. Fithian. What I was getting at was, did you get some extra
echoes that you could not account for?
Mr. Weiss. As a matter of fact, we found echoes in Dr. Barger’s
experiment not from the overhead sign for microphone position No.
4, but actually from the supporting columns that hold the overhead
sign up, these cylindrical columns about 14 or so feet high. There
were some very small echoes that bounced off there and could be
related to those posts, but they were very weak compared to the
other echoes.
Mr. Dodd. If you will yield, it has been asked in the past, and I
think you responded to it already, but the construction of the
Hyatt Hotel is a rather significant addition in the vicinity. Did that
make any difference whatsoever?
Mr. Weiss. No; because echoes from that structure would have
come in much, much beyond the three-tenths of 1 second or half
second that we have been considering.
Mr. Dodd. Thank you.
Mr. Fithian. I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman yields back the balance of his
time.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Edgar.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Weiss, are you aware
of the phenomenon that exists out on the open sea when ships are
trying to locate the port and they hear a foghorn in the distance?
Are you aware of the phenomenon that occasionally the sound
from that foghorn directs the ship in a false direction, as opposed
to the accurate direction of seeking a safe harbor, and, in fact, in
some instances those ships wind up on the rocks and go in exactly
the opposite direction of where they should go?
Mr. Weiss. No, sir; 1 am not.
Mr. Edgar. I would like to congratulate you for what I think is a
refreshingly good answer. Let me ask you if you are aware of the
fact that on radar scopes, sometimes the blips that occur on radar
scopes are not accurate?
Mr. Weiss. That I am not aware of. I have some knowledge of
radar, and 1 am not sure of quite what you mean by not accurate
in this instance. If you could define the condition that might pro-
duce the inaccuracy, I could respond to it, but I have some knowl-
edge of radar, having spent some years working with it.
Mr. Edgar. How do you know that the squiggly lines you are
looking at are really supersonic?
Mr. Weiss. We do not know it at all.
Mr. Aschkenasy. They are not supersonic. Those are sound
waves. Those are presentations of sound waves. The question, what
610
you might want to ask, is about whether we can tell a bullet was
there, namely, was it creating a supersonic shock wave. That is
what you are questioning. And those are not supersonic sound
waves. Those are sound waves as recorded by a microphone, and
put into electrical form by the equipment that was used to trans-
mit it and record it, and there is nothing supersonic in those
squiggles that we have up there on that board.
Mr. Edgar. Would you answer the question I wanted to ask?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Well, because you have a bullet that travels
faster than sound, it will get to someplace faster than the sound
reaching that same point. We are talking about two components,
the bullet and the muzzle blast. The bullet flies, let's just pick a
number, at 2,220 feet per second, so that it travels at twice the
speed of sound for this particular example, when you fire the gun.
And it flies, let's say for 200 feet. It will get at the target 200 feet
away in a certain period of time. Just like a boat pushes the water
ahead of it creating the V-shape wake behind the boat, that is
similar to what you see in a shock wave from a bullet. And that
shock wave is what is recorded by the microphone that is right
next to the target. Sometime later, finally the sound catches up to
it and gets to the target, and the muzzle blast is recorded. That
interval of time is fixed, by the fact that you have a certain muzzle
velocity and you have a certain distance, they occur in a fixed time
relationship. We have also the first, it's covered by the photo-
graph — could somebody remove that photograph, please. If I may
point something out there.
Mr. Edgar. Yes.
Mr. Aschkenasy. I can point out here also these first impulses
before the muzzle blast, those are the shock waves, and if you look
carefully — I am sure you cannot look that carefully at that dis-
tance — but if you look at these graphs, because these microphones
are located at different positions on the street, the relationship
between the shock wave and the muzzle blast changes, and it
changes in a predictable manner because the manner in which you
expect them to change is related to where the observer, or the
microphone is picking up both the shock waves and the muzzle
blast.
Now, you measure here about on the average of about 14 milli-
seconds, 14 thousandths of a second delay between the shock wave
and the muzzle blast. We go now here to the police tape and the
measurement that we found was around 24 milliseconds here. It is
now reasonable to assume because of the measured time interval
that the impulse may have attributes of a shock wave.
If you expand the experiment tape and take an even better look
at it, you find there is a little shock wave echo right in between the
shock wave and the muzzle blast, and if you expand the police tape
properly, you find similar patterns, implying to us that this im-
pulse has the qualities, attributes of a shock wave.
Mr. Edgar. Two further questions relating to that. Your length
of little squiggly lines which represent this particular shot, does
that impinge on the next shot?
Mr. Aschkenasy. No, no; this point right here in time is approxi-
mately seven-tenths of a second before the beginning of the next
611
shot, and this whole display here is approximately three-tenths of a
second.
Mr. Edgar. I know this was not part of your scientific work, but
when you look at the whole tape played out, how many muzzle
blasts did you see?
Mr. Aschkenasy. We did not look at the whole tape as you
describe it, laid out. We saw, we examined this one in very great
detail, and we examined the other candidates that we had been
asked when we reviewed the first approach and before the experi-
ment that Dr. Barger performed.
Mr. Edgar. But would it be your expert opinion that Dr. Barger
would be able to have described and looked at the number of
muzzle blasts?
Mr. Aschkenasy. I am sure that he looked — I don't understand
what you mean. When, muzzle blast relating to the Dallas police
tape?
Mr. Edgar. It seems to me if you have large lines indicating
when the muzzle blast occurred, that if you looked at the total tape
played out across the room, that we would see four things that
would look like four muzzle blasts.
Mr. Aschkenasy. However, they will not look the same, because
at the locations where they were picked up the motorcycle was in
different orientation relative to the sound source, and as was dis-
cussed earlier, the windshield has an effect, the position of the
microphone, which we suspect was on the left side of the motor-
cycle, those all would affect the quality, if I can call it that you
know, the shape of the received muzzle blast.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman, I have just one question of Mr.
Aschkenasy before he steps down.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Fithian is recognized.
Mr. Fithian, I did not quite understand what you said. Would
the shock wave produce the same echo pattern as the muzzle blast?
Mr. Aschkenasy. No, no; the shock wave produces its own echo
pattern. I do not know exactly what it is, but this sure does look
like one. It is a qualitative statement rather than a quantitative
statement.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Edgar.
Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman, I just have one additional question
and that is the question of probability. The thing we have been
reading about in the newspaper and what you have testified this
morning is you are 95 percent sure that what we are seeing is a
fourth shot. And if I understand the use of the word probability, it
is based on some history. I wonder if you could describe the history
around which your 95-percent probability is based.
Mr. Weiss. Well, the probability we are talking about here is
simply that sort of calculation that says well, look, let us not talk
in terms of echoes and so forth. We have a range here of about 300
milliseconds, and let us divide it up into 2-millisecond intervals,
giving 150 intervals. Now suppose that we are dealing with a deck
of 150 cards, and I tell you that in this deck there are only 12
spades. All right, if I give you 14 chances to deal cards from the
deck, what are the chances that you are going to deal out 10
612
spades? The probability of that is less than 5 percent. In other
words, the probability of something happening by a random proc-
ess, that would have generated, in fact, a set of data that closely
matches a known set of events, that is to say a predicted set of
echoes, they are the knowns, the chances of that occurring is less
than 5 percent.
Mr. Edgar. So what you are saying is if we would go back to
Dallas, and have a gunman perched on top of the railroad overpass
shooting at a target, that there would be only a 5 percent chance.
Mr. Weiss. No; that is different situation entirely. That is not a
random event. That is a systematical one. You are describing a
specific process.
Mr. Edgar. What I am suggesting is 100 different locations in
Dealey Plaza where you could shoot a rifle and get echo patterns.
Mr. Weiss. No; again we are dealing with generative processes,
not one of them will match exactly, unless he is merely within a
few feet. If you pick the microphone where it was and move it at
the right rate, and now we have all of these people spread all over
Dealey Plaza shooting wherever they want, then not one of them is
going to match as well as this does here.
If, however, you have a radio receiving signals, and everybody
has heard radios that receive signals, there is a lot of static, and a
lot of crackling noises going on, and some of those noises are people
turning microphones on and off. These are random events, there is
nothing systematic about it. It can occur at any time. There is
nothing which forces a crackle to occur at any one particular time.
That is the sort of thing we are talking about. Is this noise, or is
this something that occurred through a systematic process? The
chances of this being noise is less than 5 percent.
Mr. Edgar. But, what experience do we base that on?
Mr. Weiss. Oh, long theoretical experience in probability studies
of exactly this sort. This has been proven time and time and time
again over many years, this sort of analysis.
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd.
Mr. Dodd. Just going a step further, as I understood your re-
sponse to Mr. Edgar's question and, in fact, your response earlier to
the chairman's question with regard to the degree of probability,
you are 95 percent sure that there was a noise emanating from the
grassy knoll. To what extent are you sure, based on your responses
to questions I raised with you, with like sounds that could create
that pattern, to what degree are you sure that this was a rifle that
was fired from the grassy knoll?
Mr. Weiss. Well, I never, I have not done any kind of considera-
tion of certainty there. I cannot, in fact, say I am sure at all, all I
can again do is point to the evidence of a shock wave preceding the
muzzle blast, and, in fact, as Mr. Aschkenasy pointed out, there is
even a kind of early shock wave echo.
Mr. Dodd. But you were fairly, in response to my questions about
similar things that could occur that would create a sound, you said
to me that you did not know of anything else that could create a
pattern such as we have seen here other than a rifle.
Mr. Aschkenasy. Well, the question that you posed to us just a
few seconds ago is what kind of a probability did we assign to the
question of whether there was a rifle there or not; correct?
613
Mr. Dodd, Correct.
Mr. Aschkenasy. Now, how we did the analysis was to locate the
source and the receiver, namely, the motorcycle. And the detail of
analysis that we applied to that process was not applied to the
question of whether it was a rifle or not. To us, we were satisfied
enough that there were indications of a rifle, but we did not
proceed to the extent that we did with locating the source and in
locating the motorcycle. The question of whether it was a rifle or
not is equally important and must be addressed with the same
degree of refinement that we applied to that one.
Mr. Dodd. Are there acoustical tests that could be performed
that would provide us with some degree of probability as to wheth-
er or not that, in fact, was a rifle?
Mr. Aschkenasy. I would take 10 minutes to think it,
Mr. Dodd. I am sorry?
Mr. Aschkenasy. I would need 10 minutes to think some tests
up.
Mr. Dodd. But there are tests
Mr. Aschkenasy. Oh, sure.
Mr. Dodd. That could be performed?
Mr. Aschkenasy. Oh, sure.
Mr. Weiss. By the way, for clarification of those listening who
may be wondering what a shock wave is, that is the well-known
crack sound that you hear when a rifle is fired that precedes the
muzzle blast. It is normally almost simultaneous with the bang or
muzzle blast, itself. It is similar to the sort of thing you hear when
someone cracks a whip and, of course, a very louder and deeper
toned example is the sound you hear when an airplane goes by
overhead at a greater speed than the speed of sound. It is a sharp,
very brief, but very intense sound.
Mr. Dodd. May I address this to Mr. Blakey, I am curious as to
why we did not ask for an acoustical analysis of that which created
the sound in addition to its location.
Mr. Blakey. We began with oral testimony, an eyewitness testi-
mony that heard rifle fire from that direction. We began with oral
testimony of people seeing smoke from that direction. And the
question was, was there scientific corroboration for what the people
heard and saw in Dealey Plaza: That is, gunmen shooting from
different directions.
When we asked Dr. Barger to determine whether he could detect
gunfire on the tape, we asked him literally to do that. He did, and
what he found on the tape apparently was gunfire that we had
substantial corroboration for on shots 1, 2, and 4 from the deposi-
tory in the ballistic and neutron activation analysis, and in the
other areas. The material that they looked at for a possible shot
from the grassy knoll on 3 looked like the other patterns, and the
question that was asked of us was not did a rifle fire from that
direction, but did a shot fire from that direction. And consequently
what we have, what we were concerned with was the direction of
the shot.
Mr. Dodd. We made an assumption that it was a shot?
Mr. Blakey. No; I think that the match between the known shot
in Barger's test and the possible shot in the 1963 tape was suffi-
ciently clear on a 50-50 probability that it was 50-50 that it was
614
rifle. Now, the next question was, could we carry that direction
further, and we did. I don't know if it is fair to say we assumed it
was a rifle. But what it corresponded to was a rifle shot. To the
degree that it had a supersonic wave preceding it, one would sup-
pose it was a rifle. In the original test shots it ought to be appropri-
ate to note that we fired a pistol from the grassy knoll and we did
not assume that it was either a rifle or a pistol on it. We fired both,
and the correspondence was to the rifle, not the pistol.
Mr. Dodd. You fired both the pistol and rifle?
Mr. Blakey. We fired both a pistol and rifle from the grassy
knoll, and the correspondence was to the rifle. Mr. Cornwell has
something to add to that, Mr. Dodd.
Mr. Cornwell. I might note just for the committee's interest
that marksmen with the Dallas Police Department that fired the
pistol hit in an area after several shots, I did not check it all the
way to the end, but after several shots you could cover all of their
pistol shots with a quarter, so even though they were obviously
excellent shots, the distances involved are not lengthy, so that,
roughly speaking, the ability to hit a target at those distances
would be somewhat comparable whether you used a pistol or a
rifle.
Mr. Fauntroy. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman from the District of Columbia,
Mr. Fauntroy.
Mr. Fauntroy. That raises the question in my mind as to wheth-
er in fact, there were at that time pistols that could create the
impulse of a rifle in terms of the speed of the muzzle blast, and I
have the feeling that we do not have that information available to
us now. In short, you recall my question earlier.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Fauntroy, I think we may.
Mr. Fauntroy. I would like to know about the pistols fired.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Cornwell is looking at a Gun Digest that may
have that data in it.
Mr. Fauntroy. Very good. Mr. Chairman, I will yield at this
point.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Chairman, the Gun Digest which we have
previously admitted as JFK exhibit F-673 does reflect that there
were pistols available on the market in 1963 which fired ammuni-
tion supersonically, above the speed of sound.
Mr. Fauntroy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. Any members seeking further recognition.
Mr. Cornwell, do you have a further request of the Chair?
Mr. Cornwell. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I might request that you
consider asking Mr. Aschkenasy and Professor Weiss if they could
provide us in some written form a supplement for this record
which would correspond to the diagrams they previously drew on
the blackboard and, of course, which we lost in the process of
erasing and creating subsequent diagrams.
Mr. Weiss. Yes, we can.
Mr. Dodd, Mr. Chairman, may I make an additional request. We
are going to have Dr. Barger on this afternoon, and I think it
would be highly appropriate if we had both of our present wit-
nesses with him at the time so that if there are questions that
would be asked of Dr. Barger that he may want to refer to either
615
Dr. Weiss or Dr. Aschkenasy, they would be right there so we
would have some consistency in the questioning.
Chairman Stokes. As long as the gentlemen can be available to
us, the committee would appreciate it.
Professor Weiss, Mr. Aschkenasy, at the conclusion of witnesses
testimony before our committee
Mr. Blakey. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. I would note Mr. Asch-
kenasy has a religious obligation that will prevent him from being
here this afternoon. And I think Mr. Weiss could make it.
Mr. Weiss. Yes.
Chairman Stokes. Professor Weiss, Mr. Aschkenasy, at the con-
clusion of a witness testimony before our committee, the witness
has 5 minutes during which time they may in any way explain or
amplify their testimony before this committee. I would extend to
the two of you at this time 5 minutes for that purpose, if you so
desire.
Mr. Weiss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will not take very much
time at all. I simply would like to take this opportunity, as I did in
the executive session, to put on the record my appreciation for the
great work of the committee staff in getting information to us that
we had requested that was important in our analysis.
I also would like to express my deep appreciation for the fine
cooperation of the New York City Police Etepartment in arranging
for and performing for us the various experiments that were con-
ducted at their firing range and that really greatly helped us to
understand better what we were looking at.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. Well, thank you, and on behalf of the commit-
tee I certainly want to thank both of you for the time you expend-
ed, the cooperation you have given to both the staff and this
committee, and for the testimony that you have rendered here in
this hearing room today. We are indebted to both of you and thank
you very much.
Mr. Weiss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Aschkenasy. Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. Blakey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As you will recall, the time span between the shots allegedly
fired by Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository itself po-
tentially raises the specter of a conspiracy. FBI expert testimony to
the Warren Commission indicated that Oswald's rifle could not be
aimed and fired in less than 2.25 to 2.3 seconds. Consequently, for
the Commission to conclude that Oswald fired two or more shots,
there had to be at least that time interval between them.
The acoustics project has now made available to the committee
evidence indicating that shots 1 and 2 from the depository were
1.59 seconds apart. If the FBI expert testimony is correct, Oswald
could not have been firing alone from the Texas School Book
Depository building — there had to be another gunman.
As you will also recall, Mr. Chairman, I reported to the commit-
tee on September 11 the results of preliminary tests conducted by
the staff at the Metropolitan Police Department firing range in
Lorton, Va, under the general supervision of Sgt. Cecil Kirk. Those
tests established that a Mannlicher-Carcano could be operated ac-
616
curately in considerably less time than had been indicated by the
FBI.
I indicated in September that these were preliminary tests and
that more refined tests would be subsequently performed. They had
been scheduled for the early part of December, Unfortunately,
Sergeant Kirk had to undergo surgery, delaying the test results.
Delayed test results are, therefore, not expected until the first of
the year. Nevertheless, the preliminary tests are sufficient to cast
into serious doubt the previously established FBI time intervals.
The difference between the two sets of tests may be accounted
for by the simple fact that a telescopic sight was used by the FBI,
while the open iron sights of the Mannlicher-Carcano were used by
committee staff marksmen. It is the view of the committee's expert
firearms panel that the open sights on Oswald's Mannlicher-Car-
cano would have been preferred, given the conditions in Dealey
Plaza in 1963. It is worth noting that in firing tests for the commit-
tee in Dealey Plaza in August 1978, Dallas Police Department
marksmen, using open iron sights, had no difficulty hitting their
targets.
The results of the acoustics project not only led the committee to
reexamine the FBI firing data, it also led the committee to look for
a policeman on a motorcycle. The acoustics experts had predicted
that the motorcycle with the stuck microphone was located in an
area where neither they nor the committee had seen a motorcycle.
If it could be proved that no motorcycle was in the predicted
location at the time of the shots, then serious doubt would be
raised about the reliability of the acoustics project. Similarly, when
Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy later told the committee that
their analysis of the waveforms indicated that the microphone was
probably located on the left side of the motorcycle, no one knew
the identity of the officer, or if, in fact, his microphone was mount-
ed on the left.
The committee then began a review of the available documenta-
tion and film coverage of the motorcade to see if the acoustics
predictions could be verified. It was a classic, scientific experiment.
Our first efforts were disappointing. We found a picture of a DPD
motorcycle parked in front of the Texas School Book Depository,
showing its microphone mounted on the right side, not the left, and
we could not find a motorcycle that appeared to be in the right
location in Dealey Plaza.
Nevertheless, the investigation continued. The initial plans of
the Dallas Police Department specified that the motorcade would
be led by five motorcycles, followed closely by the lead car contain-
ing Chief Curry, and then the Presidential limousine. Eight motor-
cycles were to flank the Presidential limousine, four to its left and
four to the right rear side. Motion pictures of the actual motorcade
reflect that the initial plans were altered slightly on the morning
of November 22, and only four motorcycles remained close to the
Presidential limousine during the motorcade, two on each side. The
other four, ridden by Officers McLain and Courson on the left and
Baker and Haygood on the right, were spaced throughout the
parade route at varying distances, but generally several car len^hs
separated them and they were behind the Presidential limousine.
617
Ultimately, the committee found film coverage, however, of the
motorcycle in Dealey Plaza showing a bikeman on Houston Street
several car lengths behind the Presidential limousine as it turned
in front of the Texas School Book Depository from Houston onto
Elm, the place that the acoustics project suggested it would be. The
officer riding that motorcycle has been identified as Officer H. B.
McLain.
It would be appropriate now, Mr. Chairman, to call Officer
McLain.
Chairman Stokes. The committee calls Officer McLain.
Mr. McLain, may I ask you to raise your right hand, please, and
be sworn?
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give
before this committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. McLain. I do.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you. You may be seated.
The Chair recognizes counsel, Gary Cornwell.
TESTIMONY OF POLICE OFFICER H. B. McLAIN, DALLAS
POLICE DEPARTMENT, DALLAS, TEX.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. McLain, what is your present occupation?
Mr. McLain. Police officer, city of Dallas.
Mr. Cornwell. How long have you been so employed?
Mr. McLain. I am working on my 26th year.
Mr. Cornwell. What is the nature of your present assignment
with the Dallas Police Department?
Mr. McLain. At the present, an accident investigator.
Chairman Stokes. Would the witness please pull the microphone
a little closer to him?
Mr. Cornwell. Directing your attention to 1963, what was the
nature of your assignment during that year?
Mr. McLain. I was assigned to ride a solo motorcycle.
Mr. Cornwell. And how long had you been riding a solo motor-
cycle?
Mr. McLain. Approximately 8 years.
Mr. Cornwell. If I could direct your attention to November 22,
1963, the day that President Kennedy came to Dallas, were you
part of the motorcade escort for the motorcade on that day?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Chairman, may I have marked and admitted
as JFK exhibit F-679, a memorandum of the Dallas Police Depart-
ment, dated November 21, 1963?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
618
JFK Exhibit F-679
Kovamber 21,; 1963
:'r. J. 2. Curry
Chief of Police
Subj£:;t: Prosidont J.F. Kennady^s Dallas
Visit L PS-r^da - Assignnonts,
Friday, Kovenber 22, I 963
Sir; :
The folloTiing plans are 5ucau.ttcd fc::' policing the parade, and other traffic and security
Tl'io nanpOT;3r used to handle these asiilgments »dll cona from the Traffic Division and
available Police Reserves, All personnel to be on assigiwent before 10:00 AJi«, unless
cchcrviso specified.
D:ipu,ty Chief R. H, Lunday - In Charge of Detail - 6
Captain ?. U, lawrence - Assistant in Chai^go - 125
Presidential Solo Escort:
lead
Left Side
Right Sica
Sgt., S, Ell . 3-150 ,
E. Gray- j 56
D. Breu^. - 1:7
W. G. Iur.p::..n-15^Hf
_*-K, K. Freer. n-l75y ' , c tt/l
B. VI. ‘
B, J* Kartir.-i.Uj
fA. B. KcLai;:-155
Courscr.-lbo
D, L. Jacks :;n- 15"^
J. M, Chane ’,-.15y
':<C. A. Haygc .i-li'l
L. Baker-i:^.
•ijSgt. R. S;
vQ, J,
Dale-1
fif:.
'^frJill cover Sts.rr.ons Irueiay -ralfio 1^;.. . to the rear of
escort to prevent an;/ vahic.es fro-; a. .sing Presidontial
party.
Ad/ance bnit (a 1'.. ; of Parade):
Sgt. S. Q.
• B, Garrj.^t;
^rO.C. KcBrid.-l33
.-190) 5 //J£-a.
619
I'otor ?col (Trade 1-art Corr.and Post):
53 t, ?.. L, Striegel -130 J. 0, Fen0ay-27li {PStor) T - /i-L
G^t. II, C. Cari?'ooll-230 (After) Ii, K, Hif,3ins-2S2 (After)^,tP. iC/»PP«^o - /ilf
lT K. Marchsll-139 3. Jonoj>-293 (After) r /Sn
r. J. Kcy-Ihl V, Price-295 (After) or a - w -ȣ
M.?.. Feathers ton-15U (After) G, L. lhirnoll-277 (Aftor)«J-/?-
J. H. Taylor- 157 (After) C. F. Fields-275 (After)
3, D. l;af fcrd -159 (After) C. v:. -Wattr-266 (After)
J. VI. mnia-ns-162 (After)
Tt'affic ard Security Assignnents, Trade Kart (7;00 A,H, assignment):
Sgt, U. R 4 :-:ussc11-230
P. il. Coo?--(3--.:n)-23l
V?. R, Jordan (3 ''dh)-273
E.F. Kynarcik (3 V’n)-237
M, A. Rhoad-s (3 ■Tn)-292
J.G. Robinson (3 v,7i)-291
paredo Route Traffic and Security Assignmor.ts:
Lt, V. ?, Southard - 120
Sgt» VI « A, SiEpson -250 (1) lovj Field to TUrtlo Creek
(2) liv.: Field to Kocldngbird & Hines
Sgt* 3, F» Rodgers -2 20 (1) T,v ;le C;riOk * Cedar Springs to Harwood
(2) :-Iin;-.s, Industrial to Iimood Rd.
Sgt. D. V. Karknsss-260 (1) Kain I Finld to Houston L Elm
(2) Inc nstrial & liincs
Sgt. VI. C. Campball-280 (1) Kai.i-Han.'ood to Field
(2) Mot..r Fool, Ti*ade Mar^;
i:o-?arld.ng Detail: (7:00 A. H. Assigr. .ant) ,
Sgt* L, 3. ;-:C'.Tard-290
J. T. i-riFf in -279
C. R, :arii-.ion-2.33
T. A. .:ution-28u
K. S. Si.andfield-lSl
All officero worJ;
V'lost side North-
bound Stermons 5orv,
Rd, between entrance
Sl Industrial
ASGigiV'.snt
(W“
Cedar Springs St
Dri''rc.;r:y at Love
Field Statue ( EAST
sir.s )
Cedar Springs &
Ilocldngbird
Officer
J, y. Alvis-235 (3-.Jii)
H. K. Colli rrs
C. E. vrnitnan -257 (car
J. B. Jones
J* S* Jeriiingo
VI. M. Huggins
620
As.signr.3nt j^'2
Assigrjiant ffi
Officer
Kocld-n^lcird L Lension . 3-^- officer T-?:rk Mocicingbird &
Continental entrance
to Ste,7nions Pir/ -
Denton
other man wor!-: West
side Ilorthbourd
Stemnorj Gorv, Rd,
botyson entrance i;
Industrial
Lennon t Inwood
y.f officer \Jork Indu at-
Z;OcId.D"bird t
rial Eo:it of St'-. -.mono at
rlorthbcund Sterj-.ens T'-ry-
other man work ’.oct sic3
Northbound 3te.Tr:ons Sarv,
Rd, between entrance dc
Industrial
llaple
C,M.Barnhart-?6S- (3-^vTi)
P. VI. Britton .
L.E.Bailharz>-269 (J,J)
V, Glasgow
len-.rr»on t Douglas
Lcr.;^ion {.■ Cali Lawn
(above 3il i?!!!
transport)
l£::r..v.on & Turtla
Crock (3)
‘iurtlc Crook & Hall
Ir.-.-ccc i Kines
(under Hines) J. H. Caldwell-267 (3t'0
(Transport officers
below)
Kockingbird &. Forest VJ, E. Barker
Park Rd. B. E. Wilson
Kinos &. Butlar (1) B. Q. Horn-255 (car)
Hines £; lofXand (2) A. B. Gass
(3) M.E. Baker
R. F. Cale-272 (y^y)
G. U. Haraion
Vdi-tlc Creok & Bowoa
0. K. Henley-268 (yi)
N. L. VJllIia.'ns
C v.lr.r Springs i Turtle
Cvoolc ilvd.
llotor Pool- Tirade
Hart J.O. Fenloy-271; (jj)
621
Ccczr Sprir.^5 t Katy EH
tvcrpcss (atop overpass) V1«R« Bardin-259 (car)
Cedar Springs t Fainr.ount
(above car vill transport)
Cedar Snrlr.^ t Kaole
y.
Cedar Springs Cc Olivo
Cedar Springs t HaTHOod (3)
Harrfsod £i McKinney
F* T. Chanca-252.
I'ator Pool-Trade Kart R.K. Higgins-2 82 (Jcl)
J,A« Greonhaw
Kotcr Pool-Trada Kart E. Jones-293 (3^J)
G.R. Spears
RH Crossing on
Industrial (Hines)
Indoatrial L Hinos (l) H.t-?, Perkins-265 (?-)
(2) l-J.W. Tippett
(3) V.D, Sanders
Motor Pool- Trade Mart W. Price-295 (3/0
II. A. Smith
Harwood L Ross
Kotor Pool-Trade Mart G.L. ParneU-277 (3^)
E. U, Speir
Harwood t San Jacinto
Harwood t Bryan
Han Odd t. live Oalc
Kar-cood L Pacific
Harwood t. Bin
Han^ood L Main
Main St. Paul
Main i Srvay
Main t. Stone
y:\in & Akard
H. L. Cox
Leo Ha3e
Motor Pool- Trade Mart C.F. Fie Ids -2 75 (3^)
G.N. Hoslans
L. lid die ton
Motor Pool-Trade Mart C.W. Watt-266 ( 3-^)’
2. L. CreashoM
J. H. Harkins
H« A. Inrton-286 (JJ)
ft, L. Venable
E. E. Sawyer
B. J. Boyd
y^.'S- T?i ^ IT01 1 li
W. R, rinigan
E. H. Gilbert
Pnotr ?fi4
T. M. Kansen
M.J. Wiso
35-379 0 - 79-40
622
Main t: Piald
Main li Morphy
Main i Griffin
V.
Main ^ Po/dras .
Main t Ininar
Main i >:ar::at
Main 2: R.ccord
H.nin i Ho 02 ton
pious ton c Elm
MliJi t RH Overpass
(both officers atop
P?. overpass - one man
on East side & one man
on Most sice)
3tcm.r.onc Fras'osy So nr*
Hd. C’lilPASS (atop
overpass)
i:;? Overpass across
btar.'cna r aovay (just
Morth cf vi,v. S trees -
one “an on South catwalk t
cti.ar -..an on Korth catwalk)
S V C /crpass at
inc..s..riai (3 locale r
aten C.orpass on East side)
^R.dukPeePe^i.
M e t er Pool (E g edo j fart (SOH >)
H. H» Georgo
I5<> ■= /3, '3«'/0
K. L. Alton
M ats y r\jol - Tiade Jlor t
J. C, Boggs
E— D^aXf ord«l^MSoio )
/p.“T 0^ 'y f<J
D. L.Kcrapor
C. Dyor
D. D, East
E. K. Shetlnr
Mnr . nr P o o l- gy n d o Mart . VT . R . ypathorat e n - ISib -^S
. A, Springs
'J{Li- i R—K* hiUxIiitU 2>6 (j/Jj
M.A. Dawees
A. E. Garrison
B. J. Fox
C. £. lewis
VI. H. Denham
V7. 2. Barnett
J, M. Smith
E.L. Smith
J. VL Foster
J. C. vroite
J. 2. Murphy-271 (J.J)
J. A. Lomax
E. 7- Brorijn
C. E. Shankles-2?a (J.;)
623
J.R. l!ao:cay-279 (JO
R, J. 'Kosan
U.E. 17il5on
(Police Reserve Croud Control assigrj'.onts attached)
~~r. c lE-
RespectfuUy, Ce-/vT/£V
d. -L. HnLL
R. H, lunday
Deputy Chief of Police
cPqT/?^iL /f/? D ^ Tc /7^^/A; P ^/\) ^ a.'i.iT S .-
C. tue,G^J -r-_;2£4f
Pnp,:ri _ -ro p.f.eofiO-H- _ 3 g?
./ „ « *r jSo-fttrtS. —
rmp^ ,f'^
• ' « *1 <-
P«Tec)_
LO ^.'Ix'/mG - 3-S”/
W p>-i>eni ' 3 / 3 ;'V 3
'^^■5ep^/ /?• 5/»Z^S
624
Pciici Rjscrve Assign:r.onts (Crowd Control):
625
Mr. Cornwell. Officer McLain, the exhibit which we just
marked for identification and which I showed you last night re-
flects that there were five motorcycles assigned to ride as the lead
in the motorcade in front of Chief Curry’s car, and then there were
four motorcycles initially contemplated on November 21, the day
before the motorcade, to escort the President’s car on the left rear
side, and another four motorcycles on the right rear side.
Would it be consistent with your memory that those initial plans
were altered somewhat on the actual day of the motorcade, and
that in fact only two motorcycles flanked the President’s car on the
left and right in close proximity to it?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir; that’s the way it was.
Mr. Cornwell. In the initial plan for the escort dated the day
before, you were listed as being assigned to ride the left side of the
President’s car. We have reviewed film coverage of the motorcade,
and I would ask you if it would be consistent with your memory
that you rode several car lengths back, but still on the left side of
the motorcade from the President’s car?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir; I rode in the general vicinity of Vice
President Johnson’s car.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you happen to recall who would have been
riding to your rear on the same side of the motorcade?
Mr. McLain. I believe that was Courson.
Mr. Cornwell. That is Officer J. W. Courson?
Mr. McLain. J. W., yes.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you happen to recall who would be riding in
approximately the same position as you on the right side of the
motorcade?
Mr. McLain. That would be M. L. Baker.
Mr. Cornwell. As the motorcade progressed from Love Field
through downtown and ultimately into Dealey Plaza, would the
positions, say, of yourself and the other motorcycles have been
constant with respect to any particular car or, on the other hand,
would it have fluctuated within the general area of the motorcade?
Mr. McLain. Yes, it would vary from, say, the Vice President’s
car back to the bus, some four or five car-lengths, I would say.
Mr. Cornwell. Let me ask you another question: The motorcade
would also — the spacing of it, would that be constant, or would that
have varied?
Mr. McLain. No, that varies, too. Generally, it is pretty close to
the same, but on turns and stuff they’ll jam up and then they’ll
spread out.
Mr. Cornwell. OK. So both the motorcycles and the motorcade
would slow up and jam up at turns, and then speed up and spread
out a little bit during the stretch areas; is that correct?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Now I would like to show you, if I might, Mr.
Chairman, and have marked as exhibits and admitted as exhibits
No.’s JFK F-668, F-669, F-670 and F-671, which are photographs
of various parts of the motorcade. May we have those admitted as
exhibits?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, they may be entered into
the record.
[The information follows:]
JFK Exhibit F-669
JFK Exhibit F-671
Mr, Cornwell. And simply because the clarity might be better,
we have a consolidation of those in a smaller scale, which has been
marked for identification as exhibit F-681. May we also have that
admitted into the record?
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record,
[The information follows:]
JFK Exhibit F-681
Mr. Cornwell. I might explain that each of these large 30 by 40
inch blowups were taken from a single frame of a motion picture.
You have, of course, had an opportunity to review such motion
pictures yesterday; is that correct, Officer?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. The first exhibit, JFK F-668, on the left, reflects
the motorcade from its left side. There is an officer a short distance
ahead of the cameraman, a number of cars, and then further down
the motorcade, also on the left side, two motorcycles.
Do you recognize the street that that was taken on?
Mr. McLain. That looks like it was taken on Houston.
Mr. Cornwell. Approaching Houston?
Mr. McLain. No; on Main Street, approaching Houston.
Mr. Cornwell. So then, Houston Street would be where the
buildings break apart and you see a lot of sky toward the end of
the street; is that correct?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
629
Mr. Cornwell. Where Houston crosses Main?
Mr. McLain. The tree that you see there will be on the opposite
side of Houston.
Mr. Cornwell. In Dealey Plaza?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir. You will turn between the tree and the
building on Houston.
Mr. Cornwell. Can you tell us whether or not the motorcycle
officer in the foreground of that picture — the one closest to the
cameraman — was you?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Then directing your attention to the next exhibit,
F-669, would it be fair to state that that is a photograph taken
down Houston Street from approximately the location of the inter-
section of Main and Houston, looking toward the Texas School
Book Depository?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. I might state for the record, Mr, Chairman, that
in frames just prior to the ones which have been blown up here, it
is clear that the cars at the extreme portion of the photograph,
away from the photographer, consist of the Presidential limousine,
flanked by two motorcycles, and the Secret Service followup car;
but you can still see with some clarity in the photograph the Secret
Service followup car and the two motorcycles. In other words, the
Presidential limousine is right at the corner and turning from
Houston onto Elm, and from the School Book Depository.
The next two photographs have been placed on the easels out of
sequence. May we have those altered just so that they could be
viewed with more clarity?
The last two — we need to just switch their location.
Exhibit F-670 would be several frames after exhibit F-669, also
looking down Houston Street, showing essentially the same portion
of the motorcade.
And then the following exhibit, F-671, would be, again, a few
frames later.
When viewing the entire film intact, you can then see that
within a matter of seconds after the Presidential limousine turns
in front of the depository, a police officer riding a motorcycle
enters right in front of the photographer — and that is exhibit 671 —
right onto Houston Street from Main.
Can you tell us. Officer McLain, would that have been you?
Mr, McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you have a memory of hearing any shots
while you were in Dealey Plaza?
Mr. McLain, I only remember hearing one.
Mr. Cornwell. And approximately where were you when you
heard that shot?
Mr. McLain. I was approximately halfway between Main and
Elm Streets on Houston.
Mr. Cornwell. So you would have heard it sometime after the
picture was taken in exhibit F-671, the last one on the right?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. And before you got to the corner and turned the
corner from Houston onto Elm; is that correct?
Mr. McLain. Thaf s correct.
630
Mr. Cornwell. When you heard the shot, what, if anything, did
you look at or what did you do?
Mr. McLain. I just looked up the street and the only thing I saw
was a bunch of pigeons flew out behind the school book depository.
Mr. Cornwell. So you heard the shot, your memory was, looking
up, seeing the school book depository in front of you, and seeing
the pigeons fly off?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. After you heard this shot, would it be accurate to
state that you continued on motorbike, made the corner from
Houston onto Elm, and started down Elm Street?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. At some point thereafter did you hear an}d:hing
with respect to what was going on? Did you hear any radio broad-
cast?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir. The chief came on across the radio and
said head back for Parkland Hospital.
Mr. Cornwell. Now had you personally had any occasion on
that day, to your memory, to use your radio, to talk through it?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you have a distinct memory of what channel
your radio was set on?
Mr. McLain. It's normally set on channel 1.
Mr. Cornwell. And do you remember anything differently on
that day?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. The answer is no?
Mr. McLain. Nope.
Mr. Cornwell. Then it would be fair to state that since you
neither have a distinct memory nor, in fact, recall using your
radio, we simply can't determine from your memory which of the
two channels your radio may have been on at the time of the
motorcade; correct?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. That's correct.
I would like to ask you next, what happened after you heard the
broadcast from Chief Curry about proceeding to Parkland Hospi-
tal?
Mr. McLain. Well, everybody broke and headed for the hospital.
Mr. Cornwell. At the time that this occurred, you said *'proceed-
ing." I take it that means that you revved your engine up and
started up at high speed to go toward the hospital?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you have a memory of where the Presidential
or Vice Presidential limousines were roughly at the time that you
caught up with them after hearing Chief Curry's radio signal?
Mr. McLain. They were approximately — well, in front of what is
now, where they have the Hyatt House, would be the overpass over
Continental.
Mr. Cornwell. So, in other words, although you speeded up your
motorcycle and attempted to catch up to the Presidential and Vice
Presidential limousines, it took you until some point up on Stem-
mons Freeway before you could catch them; is that right?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
631
Mr. Cornwell. The motorcycles that were in use in Dallas by
the police department at that time, were they in any way unique?
Can you identify one from another?
Mr. McLain. Well, some of them you can; some of the officers
put their own personal stuff on them that would be different from
other people’s; some of them would mount them different.
Mr. Cornwell. So you could both tell by the way they rode them
and by sometimes distinct characteristics of the motorcycles, who
owned them?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Did your motorcycle have any unique character-
istics?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir; it did. For one thing, it had a chrome disk
on the right side of the front wheel.
Mr. Cornwell. As I looked at some of the pictures with you last
night, it appeared that you could see a chrome breakdrum from the
left side on all the motorcycles, correct?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. But the unique feature was on yours it had a
similar appearing chrome disk when viewed from the right?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Were there any other unique characteristics of
yours?
Mr. McLain. Well, one thing, my flashlight holder was set up
different from the rest of them.
Mr. Cornwell. How was it mounted?
Mr. McLain. It was mounted crossways of the handlebars, in-
stead of up and down.
Mr. Cornwell. Anything else?
Mr. McLain. I also had two clip holders up on the windshield
that I kept my paperwork in.
Mr. Cornwell. All right. Where was your microphone mounted?
Mr. McLain. It was mounted onto the left, between the center
and the left handlebar.
Mr. Cornwell. Now, you had an opportunity to view a very
large number of photographs taken both during the motorcade and
in Parkland Hospital yesterday evening; is that correct?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Chairman, if I might, I would like to have
admitted into the record exhibits F-675, F-674, F-676, F-677, and
F-678, and ask, if I might, that they be shown to the witness.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, they may be so marked and
shown to the witness.
[The information follows:]
JFK Exhibit F-675
13
JFK Exhibit F-676
63 .
JFK Exhibit F-678
635
Mr. Cornwell. Did you choose those photographs as both repre-
senting in the first instance, in F-675, yourself riding down Elm
Street — the number is on the back, incidentally — and in the other
cases as representing a motorcycle at the hospital, which at least
had the general physical characteristics of yours, particularly
unique characteristics that you described?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir. Here is one here with the clip holders on
the windshield, and if s got the same kind of bag that I had on
mine, that I carry my books and stuff in.
Chairman Stokes. Will you tell us the number on the back of
them? Can you give us the number?
Mr. McLain. If s F-674.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you.
Mr. McLain. And F-676, you can see the little chrome disc on
the right front wheel, sitting out behind the emergency room; and
F-678 also shows a little closer view of it, sitting in the same
position, behind the emergency room; 677 shows the general view
of the crowd and the other cars that are parked out there, and the
''No Parking'’ sign; and the bus is also shown on F-674.
Mr. Cornwell. And with respect to F-675, did you identify that
as representing you and another officer on Elm Street?
Mr. McLain. Yes; thafs myself and Sergeant Courson. Well, he
is now sergeant; he was J. W. Courson at the time.
Mr. Cornwell. So that last picture we just described, F-675, you
identified as appearing to you to reppsent yourself and Officer
Courson, and Courson was at an earlier point in the motorcade,
riding behind you, also on the lefthand side?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr, Cornwell. Now, was it possible while riding in the motor-
cade for you to hear the broadcast from the speaker of a fellow
officer who, for instance, was riding on the opposite side of the
motorcade from you?
Mr. McLain. If he had his radio turned up, yes.
Mr. Cornwell. All right. Looking again at F-675, that shows you
and Officer Courson on Elm Street in approximately the vicinity of
the grassy knoll, riding somewhat side by side. At that distance,
would it have been possible for you to hear the speaker of Officer
Courson's radio if it was broadcasting?
Mr. McLain. Very possible.
Mr. Cornwell. And at the point in time that you heard Chief
Curry state that he was going to Parkland Hospital, would it have
then been possible that what you heard was the transmission from
the speaker of Officer Courson and not in fact your own?
Mr. McLain. It could be possible.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest that at
least temporarily the committee may wish to consider the photo-
graphs, particularly F-674, F-676, F-677, and F-678, before the
Parkland Hospital, for a very limited purpose. They do, as the
officer has described, apparently contain the characteristics which
were relatively unique to his motorcycle.
And, incidentally, I might clarify, you did park your motorcycle
at the Parkland Hospital after arriving there with the motorcade;
is that correct?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
636
Mr. Cornwell. However, Mr. Chairman, the staff has not yet
had an opportunity to check the number which we can see in one
of the photographs with perhaps available — I don’t know if they
even are available— records of the Dallas Police Department. The
records that we do have reflect Officer McLain’s call number,
which he used in transmitting, but we do not have records that we
have yet been able to locate showing what his bike number was,
and until we have had an opportunity to check that out, we might
tentatively say we are not sure that those pictures do in fact
represent Officer McLain’s motorcycle at Parkland Hospital; but at
least they represent the characteristics of it, and we might suggest
that the committee may wish to consider them only for that limit-
ed purpose.
Second, Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest to you that in one
of the photographs taken at Parkland Hospital it can be interpret-
ed as having the microphone button — or at least it can to novices
such as your staff — can possibly be interpreted as having its button
pushed to the left. However, we have not had any photographic
expertise applied to that, and the distortion in the picture, or the
angle from which it was taken, may lead us to an erroneous
conclusion, so we would again
Chairman Stokes. Is the witness able to offer any assistance on
that?
Mr. Cornwell. Well, I believe. Officer, you do have a memory of
which direction you believe would be channel 1 and channel 2 on
the switch; is that correct?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. And what is that?
Mr. McLain. Channel 1 would be to the left; channel 2 would be
to the right.
Mr. Cornwell. So, Mr. Chairman, if our view of it were proven
to be correct, if it is in fact tilted to the left, it would be on channel
1. On the other hand, if the angle from which it was taken distorts
that, then it would be the opposite, on channel 2.
Another reason I would like to suggest we might be cautious in
evaluating that is that the significance of it may not be overly
great.
Chairman Stokes. You have not been moving for admission of
these exhibits into the record?
Mr. Cornwell. I am simply suggesting the committee may wish
to consider them for a limited purpose until we have had time to
do further analysis on them, namely, being representations of the
type of motorcycle that Officer McLain drove and possibly being
identical with his.
Officer McLain, are you able to tell us with any certainty which
channel your motorcycle was set to during that motorcade?
Mr. McLain. I don’t know for sure which way it was set.
Mr. Cornwell. And are you also able to tell us whether or not it
may have been changed, whatever it was initially set to, at some
point, either during the motorcade or after arriving at Parkland
Hospital?
Mr. McLain. It could have been.
Mr. Cornwell. So then, Mr. Chairman, again we might simply
note that whatever the ultimate photographic interpretation is of
637
the way that button is set, it may not be determinative, because it
could have been changed at some point prior to the time the
photograph was taken.
Did you, to your memory, have a stuck microphone on that day?
Mr. McLain. Not that I know of.
Mr. Cornwell. Do you know whether or not it would have been
possible for your microphone to have been stuck in the open posL
tion without your knowledge?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir; it has been before.
Mr. Cornwell. Under how many different circumstances in your
particular case?
Mr. McLain. Fm scared to say.
Mr. Cornwell. We have been told — and I want to ask you if this
is at all consistent with your experience — that it is possible that in
fact some gasket material in the mike, if it were worn or old, might
cause the button once depressed not to return to its open position.
Do you know whether that is possible?
Mr. McLain. That’s possible. It is also possible that the points in
that relay in there will stick when you push it in.
Mr. Cornwell. Mr. Chairman, I have no further questions.
Chairman Stokes. Let me ask counsel if counsel was able to
establish the chain of evidence as it relates to the tape from the
witness’ motorcycle?
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, as I am sure you will recall — and it
is appropriate to repeat it at this time, since those who may be
watching our hearings to date will not recall — that in September
we introduced the police officer from whom the tape was obtained.
I might summarize for the record what his testimony was:
He was — and I think his name is Paul McCaghren — he was an
officer in the Dallas Police Department, and he had custody of a
large number of records relating to the Kennedy assassination, and
he retained that custody in a large trunk, and when the material
was turned over to one of our investigators, Jack Moriarty, it was
taken from that same trunk.
I might also indicate that an effort was made to match the
transcript that we have of channels 1 and 2 to the material appear-
ing on both the Dictabelt and the tape belt that we have. Conse-
quently, the authenticity of the tape appears to be adequate, ap-
pears to have been adequately established.
Chairman Stokes. But for purposes of my question, in terms of
the chain of evidence, we have no record or testimony that trans-
fers back to the motorcycle of the witness appearing in this room?
Mr. Blakey. The tape was taken at the police department of a
radio transmission from the bike to the police department, and the
tapes were kept at the central office of the police department.
The recorder that the officer had was a radio transmitter and
not a recorder on his bike.
Mr. Dodd. Mr. Chairman, would you yield at that point?
Chairman Stokes. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. Dodd. Just to pursue this line of questioning, for instance,
was any effort made by the staff to compare the brand of the tape
disc — and I am led to believe it was — with the type of discs that the
Dallas Police Department were using at that time?
35-379 0 - 79 - 41
638
Mr. Blakey. The Dallas Police Department at that time were not
recording — again, my memory is going to correct me if I am
wrong — were not recording on tape; they were recording on Dicta-
belt.
Mr. Dodd. That is what I mean, a Dictabelt.
Mr. Blakey. And the Dictabelt that was found among this mate-
rial is the same kind of Dictabelt that the Dallas Police Depart-
ment was using at that time.
Mr. Dodd. Second, were there any other transmissions on the
tape that would correspond to activity that would have lodged in
the Dallas Police Department that day?
Mr. Blakey. Oh, yes, that is what I tried to indicate before, Mr.
Dodd. What appears on the Dictabelt and the tape recording of the
Dictabelt are indeed the same sounds, the same information that
we have based on the transcripts that we had of channel 1 and
channel 2 that go back to 1963-64.
Mr. Dodd. Was any effort made to identify other voices on the
tape, to confirm that?
Mr. Blakey. No.
Tm sorry. Mr. Cornwell, you wanted to add something?
Mr. Cornwell. The transmissions on the tapes do correspond
with the Warren Commission testimony of various officers who
described doing certain things and then reporting it over the radio,
and therefore there is substantial corroboration of that nature,
that the kinds of transmissions we have on these tapes were of the
events that were actually happening on November 22.
Mr. Dodd. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.
Chairman Stokes. Certainly.
Are there other members of the committee seeking recognition?
Mr. Devine. Mr. Chairman, I have a question, if I may.
Chairman Stokes. The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. Officer McLain, when your microphone is open,
inadvertently even, are you able to receive broadcasts?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Devine. That would preclude anyone from broadcasting into
your receiver, is that right?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Devine. Then the message you heard about going to Park-
land Hospital, you say it is possible you heard that from the other
motorbike?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir. It is also possible that Chief Curry put it
out on both channels at the same time.
Mr. Devine. If your mike was open, would that receive it on the
other channel?
Mr. McLain. No, sir; I would not hear that.
Mr. Devine. What kind of a bike were you riding, a Harley
Davidson?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Devine. A Harley Davidson. Do you recall during the time
you were in the motorcade of monitoring any broadcasts from
headquarters or other officers on your receiver?
Mr. McLain. Not offhand, but quite often we do do that.
639
Mr. Devine. But if your mike was locked open, you couldn't,
could you?
Mr. McLain. No.
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Edgar?
Mr. Edgar. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Officer, in riding in a
parade situation, where you are doing not only ceremonial duty but
protective responsibilities, would it have been common for you not
to have wanted to listen to the commands of the chief or other
officers along the route?
Mr. McLain. No, sir. We need to listen to them to know in case
something does happen what alternative route to take.
Mr. Edgar. While you were riding along, let's just suppose for a
moment that your switch was not on transmit, but was on receive,
listening to what you would normally listen to over that radio,
wouldn't you hear static?
Mr. McLain. No, not necessarily,
Mr. Edgar. Not necessarily. So that you were riding your motor-
cycle and you would not necessarily be aware whether or not you
were on receive or transmit?
Mr. McLain. No, sir. It would be dead to you. The radio would be
dead to you. You would not hear anything.
Mr. Edgar. Whether or not you were transmitting or receiving?
What I am saying is that suppose you were receiving but no one
was talking; OK, you are receiving from the chief of the Dallas
Police Department. If you were on receive, you would hear that
sound, you would hear his voice.
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Edgar. Suppose he is not talking, and no one else is talking,
but your radio is still on receive. Are you indicating that there
would be no sound at all?
Mr. McLain. No, sir, there would be no sound. There is a knob
on the control up there that you can turn your squelch up or down.
If you turn it off, then it makes no sound.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired. The
gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman, I must clarify one thing here. Offi-
cer, you said that as far as your memory is concerned, you only
heard one shot?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir, that is all that I can recall. It was a loud
one but that was the only one.
Mr. Fithian. You were on Houston Street at that time?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir, somewhere between Main and Elm Street.
Mr. Fithian. Then it is your testimony that after you turned on
Elm Street, you heard no further shots?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Fithian. Did you see anything in the area of the grassy
knoll up and to the right which would be of any interest to this
committee?
Mr. McLain. I did see Officer Hargis going up the grassy knoll.
Mr. Fithian. Going up the grassy knoll toward the fence, toward
the clearing?
Mr, McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
640
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd.
Mr. Dodd. I just wanted to get clarification on these photographs
and your identification. In the first photograph here on the left,
you identified the motorcycle closest to us in the picture as being
your motorcycle, and you are on it. How do you identify yourself
there?
Mr. McLain. The way I am sitting on it. Just the way I ride it,
Mr. Dodd. When was the last time you saw yourself sitting on a
motorcycle?
Mr. McLain. It has been a while.
Mr. Dodd. But is there anything that distinguishes you or the
bike, itself, that you are able to identify?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Fauntroy. Will the gentleman yield? How do you ride it? I
mean when you say by the way you ride, do you ride off to the
side? What is it about the picture that distinguishes you?
Mr. McLain. I don't know how to explain that. It's just the way I
am sitting on it.
Mr, Fauntroy. Look at the last picture, if the gentleman will
continue to yield, how do you know that is you?
Mr. McLain. Just the way that I am sitting.
Mr. Fauntroy. I wonder if you would care to describe how you
are sitting?
Mr. McLain. It just comes natural to you.
Mr. Dodd. As only it should, I think.
You don't identify any other mark on that last photograph as
being yourself, either, on the motorcycle?
Mr. McLain. No, sir, I can't tell.
Mr. Dodd, Let me ask you this: I had asked the acoustical people
earlier, you may have heard the question, with regard to the
ability for a receiver at the police department to accept transmit-
tals from two or more motorcycles or transmitters at the same
time. Is that your understanding as well? In other words, if you
were in the Dallas Police Department receiving calls, if one person
were on that channel transmitting, would it be possible for other
people to transmit on that same channel at the same time and also
be received by the headquarters?
Mr. McLain. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. That would accept on the same channel more than
one transmittal?
Mr. McLain. It would be hard to determine what they were
saying because they would be overlapping, but the voice would
come through. A lot of times we have the dispatcher come back
and say there is too many of you talking at one time.
Mr. Dodd. Were you ever familiar with any carillon bells or
church bells in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Dodd. Has there ever been, to your knowledge, any of that
kind of sound or noise?
Mr. McLain. No, sir.
Mr. Dodd. I thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
641
Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired. Are
there any other members seeking recognition?
Mr. Cornwell?
Mr. Cornwell. If I might, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask a
clarifying question with respect to one which one of the committee
members just asked. Officer McLain, when you were asked by the
committee a moment ago about how you identify yourself in those
two photographs, directing your attention first to the last photo-
graph, F-668, would it be fair to state that the motorcycle you
identified as yourself is the first one behind the two that were
right next to the Presidential limousine?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. And was that the position in which you were
riding in the motorcade?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Then I direct your attention to JFK F-671 on the
right, when you entered Dealey Plaza from Main onto Houston
Street, did you look up ahead to see where the Presidential and
Vice Presidential limousines were?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell, What did you see?
Mr. McLain. They were just turning the corner onto Elm Street
as I came around the corner off Main Street.
Mr. Cornwell. So if the photographs here show that the officer
in the photograph enters Houston Street from Main at the time
the Presidential limousine is turning from Main onto Elm, that
again would be you, because of the position in the motorcade?
Mr. McLain. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cornwell. Thank you. No further questions.
Chairman Stokes. Officer McLain, at the conclusion of the wit-
nesses testimony before this committee, the witness is entitled to 5
minutes. During the 5-minute period he can explain or amplify or
in any way comment in any way upon his testimony before this
committee, I would extend to you 5 minutes for that purpose if you
so desire.
Mr. McLain. No, sir, I believe he pretty well covered most of it.
Chairman Stokes, On behalf of the committee we certainly want
to thank you for both your cooperation with the staff and with this
committee and for the testimony you have given us here today.
Thank you very much. You are excused.
In light of the fact that there are several additional witnesses to
be heard from by the committee, the Chair suggests that we recess
for lunch until 2:30 p.m., and we will begin promptly at that time.
Accordingly, we will recess until 2:30 p.m,
[Whereupon, at 1:36 p.m., the committee recessed until 2:30 p.m.]
Afternoon Session
Chairman Stokes. The committee will come to order.
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, I might initially note for the record
that the temperature that was employed in the acoustics project
was obtained from the Environmental Data and Information Serv-
ice at the National Climatic Center, Asheville, N.C. The tempera-
642
ture at Love Field, Dallas, Tex., on November 22, 1963, was 63
degrees at noon and 67 degrees at 1 p.m. The skies were clear. This
is, of course, the weather service data which would be the most
accurate. In addition, Mr. Chairman, I would like to have marked
as JFK exhibit F-683 and F-682 two photographs taken in Dealey
Plaza. JFK exhibit F-683 is a photograph that includes the Texas
Book Depository, which had on the top of it a time and tempera-
ture sign and the time shown on the sign is 12:40. You can see
from the picture, itself, that JFK exhibit F-682 was taken mo-
ments thereafter. The same people are in the picture. That indi-
cates that the temperature in Dealey Plaza at approximately 12:40
was 66. It was in this context that the staff recommended to the
acoustics people that they take the temperature of 65, which would
seem to be approximately within the range of what would be
appropriate. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that JFK exhibits F-682
and F-683 be incorporated in the record at this point.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, they may be entered into
the record at this point.
[The information follows:]
644
JFK Exhibit F-683
Mr. Blakey. As previously noted, the committee originally re-
tained the services of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman to conduct its
acoustics project. Dr. James Barger, the firm's chief scientist, and a
man in charge of acoustical analysis at Bolt, Beranek, and
Newman, conducted the tests for the committee.
Dr. Barger received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the
University of Michigan in 1957, an M.S. in mechanical engineering
from the University of Connecticut in 1960, and an A.M. in applied
physics from Harvard University in 1962. In 1964, he received a
Ph. D. in applied physics from Harvard University. He has been a
sonar project officer at the U.S. Navy Underwater Sound Labora-
tory, a research assistant at Harvard University's Acoustics Re-
search Laboratory, and senior scientist and director of the physical
science division at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc.
Dr. Barger is the author of many scientific papers. He has lec-
tured in the field of applied acoustics in the United States and
Canada, and he is currently a lecturer on sound scattering and
reverberations with Bolt, Beranek and Newman's antisubmarine
warfare course. He has been a National Science Foundation fellow,
and he currently is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.
He is also a member of the U.S. Navy Advisory Board for Under-
water Sound Reference Services.
In recent years, Dr. Barger has worked as an analyst of sound
recordings in two quite celebrated cases— the shooting episode at
Kent State University, for which he studied recorded sounds of
gunfire, and the White House tapes in the Watergate case. He
helped analyze the mysterious 18-minute gap as a member of the
645
panel headed by Dr. Richard Bolt, who is, himself, the head of Bolt,
Beranek, and Newman.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr, Chairman, to recall Dr.
Barger.
Chairman Stokes. The committee recalls Dr. Barger.
FURTHER TESTIMONY OF DR. JAMES BARGER
Chairman Stokes, Doctor, you have previously been sworn in
these hearings, and I would at this time admonish you that you are
still under that oath. You understand that, of course.
Dr. Barger. Yes, I do.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you. The Chair recognizes counsel for
the committee, Mr. Jim Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Welcome back, Dr. Barger. You last testified in great
detail before this committee in public session on September 11,
1978. Today, I would like to review briefly some of the points you
made during that testimony and then ask you to comment upon
the testimony that we heard this morning from Professors Weiss
and Aschkenasy. Prior to that, however, in reference to the work
that you did on the Kent State tapes that Professor Blakey made
reference to in his narration, is it correct that in your work on that
tape recording you determined both the location of the shooters
and the timing of the shots from an acoustical analysis and that
your determination of both location of the shooters and timing of
the shots was subsequently stipulated by the defense to be correct
and admitted into evidence in a court case?
Dr. Barger. That is correct.
Mr. Wolf. When were you first approached by this committee
with the Dallas Police dispatch tape?
Dr. Barger. I believe it was in May of 1978.
Mr. Wolf. Am I correct that after a review of that tape, filtering
of the tape, and your performance of a series of tests upon that
tape, you eventually recommended to the committee that it con-
duct a reenactment in Dallas which would entail shooting at target
locations while you recorded those sounds on microphones?
Dr. Barger. Yes, that is correct.
Mr. Wolf. When was that reenactment conducted for the com-
mittee?
Dr. Barger. August 20.
Mr. Wolf. I would ask, Mr. Chairman, that JFK exhibit F-337
be displayed and inserted into the record at this time.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record at this point.
[The information follows:]
646
Microphone Locations at Dealey Plaza
JFK Exhibit F-337
Mr. Wolf. This exhibit is a diagram of Dealey Plaza and the
microphone locations that were used during the reenactment test.
Dr. Barger, I will ask you to briefly explain what the No.'s 1, 2, 3,
and 4 are on that exhibit.
647
Dr. Barger. Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4, which appear in the box
here, represent the location of the sandbag targets that were
placed on the street as targets for the gunfire.
Mr. Wolf. What do the numbers 1 through 12 that appear on the
street represent? I believe there are three sequences of them.
Dr. Barger. Yes; there are three sequences 1 through 12, Each of
these sequences represents the position of 12 microphones that
were placed in those three groups of 12 to receive the sounds of the
gunfire that were fired.
Mr. Wolf. During that test firing, what were the two locations
used to fire weapons from?
Dr. Barger. Weapons were fired from the sixth floor, corner
window, southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository and
from behind the fence on the knoll at this point.
Mr. Wolf. Were weapons fired from each location at each of the
targets?
Dr. Barger. That is correct. Rifles from the Texas School Book
Depository were fired at each of the four targets. A rifle from the
knoll was fired at each of the four targets. I am sorry; at targets 2,
3, and 5, We did not fire at target one for safety reasons. In
addition, a pistol was fired from the knoll position here at target
location No. 3.
Mr. Wolf. During those test firings you recorded through those
microphones the sounds of those test firings?
Dr. Barger. That is correct.
Mr. Wolf. Mr. Chairman, at this point, I would like JFK exhibit
F-367 to be displayed and inserted into the record.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, it may be entered into the
record.
[The information follows:]
648
List of All 15 Correlations Between Impulse Patterns
Occurring in 6 Segments of the DPD Record and Echo Patterns
from 432 Test Shots (2592 Separate Correlations)
Having a Correlation Coefficient Higher than 0.5
Beginning Time of
First Impulse on
Tape Segment
Microphone Array
and Rifle Target Correlation
(Channel Number) Location Location Coefficient**
136.20 sec
No Correlations Higher Than
0.5
t ^
140.32 sec
139.27 sec
146.30 sec
2(5)
TSBD*
1
(ft
2(5)
TSBD*
3
0.7
2(6)
TSBD
3
0.8
2(6)
KNOLL
4
0.7
2(6)
TSBD*
3
0.8
2(6)
TSBD
3
0.6
2(10)
TSBD
3
0.6
2(11)
TSBD*
3
0.6
3(5)
KNOLL
2
0.6
3(4)
KNOLL
3
0.8
3(7)
TSBD*
2
0.7
3(8)
TSBD
3
0.7
3(5)
TSBD
3
0.8
3(6)
TSBD
4
0.8
3(8)
TSBD*
2
0.7
No Correlations Higher Than . . . .
0.5
"Indicates Muzzle Withdrawn 2 ft from Plane of Window.
Number of Echoes Matched with Impulses
‘^Correlation Coefficient = — - - - ' ■ — — £ 1-0
^Number of Echoes X Number of Impulses
JFK Exhibit F-367
Mr. Wolf. Does this exhibit represent those recordings made
during the reenactment which matched the original Dallas Police
dispatch tape with a correlation coefficient of at least .5?
Dr. Barger. Yes, they do. I wish at this time I could say a few
words about the stark simplicity of the matching procedure that
was used.
Mr. Wolf. Surely.
Dr. Barger. If I may briefly, to clarify this exhibit, since it came
after three hours of explanation the last time, there were obtained
at each of these microphones the series of echoes that were re-
ceived by them when each of these rifles was fired, and it was
suggested the last time that I spoke that these might be likened to
fingerprints. That is not just a bad idea.
There is a pattern of sounds that emanate from each microphone
when each rifle is fired that is unique and that pattern is as much
a fingerprint that identifies two things uniquely, the location of the
rifle and the location of the receiver. Now obtained on the Dallas
Police recording that we discussed this morning were the sounds of
impulses, segments of impulses that look like fingerprints, too.
649
They were badly smudged by the presence of noise. We sought to
match the fingerprints we measured in the reconstruction with the
fingerprints that had been recorded, perhaps by Officer McLain in
1963. We did that matching. We did it in a numerical way. The
numerical procedure allowed us to score each match.
Now we had 432 different combinations of rifle shots and micro-
phones, so we had 432 fingerprints, as from 432 individuals, and we
wished to see if any one of those individuals were on the tape
recording as recorded by Officer McLain, perhaps. So we matched
each of the 432 fingerprints with each of the microphones, that is,
with each of six patterns of impulses that were on the Dallas tape
to see if any of them matched at all. We had a scoring procedure.
Every time the match was so good that the score was higher than
.5, we said that is a very likely match. That individual may exist at
that place on the tape. Now, I can explain what this is.
Mr. Wolf. When was that matching process completed?
Dr. Barger. It turned out there were 2,592 matches to achieve,
and each one was somewhat difficult because of the smudging of
the fingerprints, and since the fingerprints were only obtained on
the 20th of August, it was not until the 6th of September that each
of the 2,592 comparisons had been made.
Now, that was 4 days before the hearing, given that it takes 1
day to prepare for 1 day's testimony; we had 3 days to wrestle with
the fact that there were, in fact, four possible matches of finger-
prints identified in the Dallas tape. And at the time that I spoke on
the 20th of August, I indicated that of the six segments on the
Dallas police recording that contained any impulse patterns at all,
in other words, potential fingerprints, the first one began at this
time. We found no scores matching with any of these test shots
higher than .5. However, a short time later, about a second and a
half later, there was a series of sound impulses on the Dallas tape
which, in fact, scored above my threshold of .5 to be considered as a
potential fingerprint. We found when the rifle was located in the
Texas School Book Depository which is here and fired at the target
1, which is here, we passed our threshold, and we got a score, a
matching fingerprint score that was higher than .5 for the micro-
phone located in the second array, microphone 5, that one right
there.
Mr. Wolf. Dr. Barger, on JFK exhibit F-337, I believe when you
testified on September 11, you marked in colored pencil with blue,
red, green, and black, the approximate correlations between the
location of the microphone that picked up the impulse and the
location of the motorcycle, if it were traveling in the motorcade. Is
that correct?
Dr. Barger. Yes; that is correct.
Mr. Wolf. How precise are your locations for the motorcycle as
represented by those blue, green, red, and black dots?
Dr. Barger. I will try not to belabor this point, but at the time
that this experiment was designed, we did not know whether the
motorcycle was in Dealey Plaza, and we didn't certainly know
where along this entire path it was. So it was necessary to sample
for fingerprints, as it were, at every 18-foot interval. The process
thus designed turned out to be capable of locating, in fact, shots by
the fingerprint method that I have been describing. However, it
650
could not do it in space any more accurately than the distance
between two adjacent microphones. In other words, I could only
locate the possible location of that motorcycle at each time the
fingerprint was found on the Dallas tape to within 18 feet.
Mr. Wolf. So, for example, it is possible that that blue dot would
be on the other side of the location of that microphone?
Dr. Barger. The blue dot I put to show the approximate location
of the motorcycle at the time on the Dallas tape that the first
possible match was determined, I placed between microphones 5
and 6. It could equally have been placed between microphones 4
and 5, which would put it there.
Mr. Wolf. Those four groupings that you have are the four
impulses on the Dallas Police dispatch tape that you identified
during the hearing in September as possibly representative of gun-
fire in Dealey Plaza; is that correct?
Dr. Barger. That is correct. I subsequently indicated there were
four other times on the Dallas Police tape at which our matching
process indicated the possibility of a shot; in other words, a match
between the test shots and the impulses on the tape by the finger-
print process. The location of the microphone that was picking up
these sounds on the Dallas Police tape, in other words, the location
of presumably Officer McLain^s motorcycle, could be positioned,
then, as being within 18 feet of the microphone that indicated that
is where the match occurred, and, of course, since the subsequent
shots were fired later on in time, I was able to indicate that the
motorcycle was approximately here at the time of the first shot
and here at the time of the second, and here at the time of the
third, if, in fact, it were to be proved to be a shot, and here at the
time of the fourth.
Mr. Wolf. Does your prediction of the locations of the motorcycle
correspond to the testimony given by Officer McLain this morning?
Dr. Barger. Yes. In my judgment it certainly does. The officer
was able to remember— I was very pleased to hear— that when he
was around the corner from Main onto Houston, he could see the
Presidential limousine disappearing around the corner here from
Houston onto Elm. That distance would be on the order of 180 feet.
So he would then be somewhere around 180 feet, perhaps a little
less, from the Presidential limousine at that time. Now, the dis-
tance from where we think that he was at the time of the first
shot, which is here, to the distance where the Presidential limou-
sine was at the time of the first shot is about somewhere between
120 and 138 feet. Again, there is an 18-foot uncertainty. I just said
that we have located with our acoustic analysis the result that the
motorcycle was 120 to 138 feet behind the limousine at the time of
the first shot, which is right about here. Officer McLain remembers
having been about 160 to 180 feet behind at this time. He would
have, therefore, had to close a little gap, had to gain a bit on the
Presidential limousine as he came down Houston.
Mr. Wolf. That, I assume, should be expected if the limousine
was slowing as it went around the turn.
Dr. Barger. Yes; that would happen in the accordion procedure
he described, as the Presidential limousine went around here, he
would catch up. One of the first points I made as we were analyz-
ing the tape was that the speed remained high until just before the
651
first shot was detected, and, of course, he would have to slow at
that point to negotiate that corner.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you. You may return to the witness table, Dr.
Barger.
At this point, Mr. Chairman, I would ask that we mark as ^^JFK
Exhibit F-680'’ a report that has been submitted to the committee
by Mr. Anthony Pellicano. Mr. Pellicano is an independent investi-
gator who submitted a report to the committee after Dr. Barger's
testimony in September. Mr. Pellicano has never worked for the
committee or been affiliated with the committee in any capacity.
[JFK exhibit F-680 was marked for identification and follows:]
652
653
VOCE msi’RrtAixDN ft /MAiysii inx
1KD7 SOUTH MA^*N«IM RD/SUFTI 206/WESTCHESre? JtL 60*53/ 3T2 -345-9100
\OCE lOCNTlFCATlON
P4>»GNETC tape analysis
AUO tO tape BESTOfiATON
EXPERT TESTIMONY
December 13,
1978
Mr. Gary Cornvv'ell, et al
Select Committee on Assassinations
U. S. House of Representatives
3369 House Office Building, Annex 2
Washington, D. C. 20515
RE: ACOUSTICAL STUDY OF DALLAS POLICE TAPES
BACKGROUND
In the course of its investigation into the assassi-
nation of President John F. Kennedy, the Select Committee
on Assassinations has determined that during a period of
approximately five minutes on November 22, 1963 a Dallas,
Texas, police motorcycle transmitter, operating on police
Channel #1, had its transmitter keyed continuously on; that
this five minute period was probably a coincident with the
time of the assassination; and that Channel #1 transmissions
were continuously recorded on a dictabelt at Dallas police
headquarters- The possiblity was considered that this motor-
cycle may have been part of the presidential motorcade and,
if so, it may have transmitted the sounds of the shots, there-
by allowing a resolution of the conflicting testimony con-
cerning the number of shots which were fired.
654
It should be noted, however, that the motorcade was
operating on Channel ^2, which channel was implimented specif-
ically for the motorcade on associated police vehicles. Channel
/rl was maintained for normal Dallas police communications
traffic. While it would appear unlikely that a vehicle that
was a part of the motorcade would be on other than the motor-
cade channel, the possiblity of an error in channel selection
apparently was sufficient to warrant further investigation.
655
BASIS FOR MY INVESTIGATION
Upon learning by means of the news media of the possiblity
that the shots were recorded, I was desirous of determining at
the earliest possible moment whether there had, in fact, been
more than three shots, since I had neven been completely sat-
isfied with the Warren Commission Report in this regard. My
company, Voice Interpretation 5 Analysis, Ltd., is equipped
with the instrumentation and equipment which would probably
have been required for such a determination. The following
is a description of the equipment used:
A Hewlett-Packard 9845A Computer interfaced to
the following electronic equipment:
An Analogic Computer Data Conversion System
(analog to digital converter) .
A Nicolet Scientific Corporation 444A Mini-
ubiquitous FFT Computing Spectrum Analyzer.
A 9872A Digital Plotter.
(Software for adaptive filtering, FFT, and
additional necessary algorithms also programmed.)
Bruel and Kjaer Frequency Spectrum Shaper Type 5587
(analog) .
A Rockwell International Automatic Digital Audio Pro-
cessor (Digital Adaptive Predictive Deconvolver and
Adaptive Filter) .
A Voice Identification Incorporated Series 700 Analog
Frequency Spectrograph.
Along with a laboratory filled with additional sup-
portive electronic, optical scientific testing equip-
ment, and magnetic tape recording equipment, which
can be additionally listed if necessary.
656
PREDICATION
I obtained from Mary Ferrell of Dallas, Texas, a taped
copy of the Channel #1 dictabelt (which was formerly in the
hands of The Committee and subsequently returned to Mary
Ferrell). My initial approach was similar to that being
followed by Bolt, Beranek § Newman (BBSN) in their initial
test, in that I subjected the tape to various combinations
of adapted filtering, analog filtering, and fast fourier
transform spectrum analysis to attempt to detect events
which could have been shots. This approach was unsuccess-
ful. (This, apparently was unremarkable, since BB^N sub-
sequently reported that they were unable to detect such events
from this taped copy, although they report the presence of
events which could be shots on another taped copy.)
My second approach was that of studying the taped con-
tents for the purpose of applying deduction analysis. This
approach ultimately involved investigation in addition to
the analysis of this tape.
ANALYSIS
The first significant finding involved the sound of
the motorcade sirens on the Channel #1 tape. If the motor-
cycle with the open microphone had been with the motorcade,
it would be expected that the sirens' sound would have
started at full volume and, if the motorcycle had continued
with the motorcade, would have continued for the trip to
657
Parkland Hospital. On the other hand, if the motorcycle had
remained at Dealey Plaza, the sounds would have started at
full volume and the volume would have decreased as the motor-
cade pulled away. The sounds of the sirens on the tape, how-
ever, seem to increase, peak, and decrease, as if they were
approaching, passing, and leaving the open microphone position.
While this observation is admittedly somewhat subjective, if
true it would indicate that the motorcycle was not with the
motorcade, but was at some point along or near the route
taken by the motorcade on its way to the Parkland Hospital.
The second significant finding also involved the sound
of the sirens. In this case, the important factor was when
they occurred. While it becomes obvious that the time desig-
nations provided by the Channel ^^1 dispatcher may not be
completely accurate, an analysis of these time designations
puts the beginning of the sounds of the sirens somewhere
in the vicinity of 12:33; i.e., 2 or 3 minutes after the
presumed time of the shots. Since it would be expected
that the sirens would have been turned on as the motorcade
began to rush away from the Dealey Plaza, or, in other words,
a few seconds after the shots, the earliest acquisition of
the siren sounds by the open microphone, tv^^o to three
minutes later, again indicate that the motorcycle was along
the route to Parkland Hospital, rather than a part of the
motorcade .
658
In order to resolve the question of when the sirens
were turned on, I contacted Chief Curry, who was the senior
police officier in charge of the motorcade. Chief Curry
informed me that immediately after the shots were fired, he
transmitted [on Channel ^2, motorcade channel) the statement
that they were preceding to the hospital and that the sirens
were turned on immediately. While there seems to be little
reason to doubt Chief Curry’s recollection, since it could
be opined that in the excitment of the moment, none of the
vehicles preceding to Parkland Hospital had their sirens
turned on until later, I procured the tape of the Channel
#2 broadcasts to determine if the sirens could be heard
during any of the motorcade broadcasts.
From this tape it was determined that Chief Curry
broadcasted twice that they were preceding to the hospital.
The first transmission did not identify the hospital. A
few seconds after the first transmission he rebroadcasted,
identifying the hospital as Parkland. The sirens can be
heard in both broadcasts and can be heard in subsequent
broadcasts. [The sirens are more clearly discernable at
the beginning of the the first broadcast. For this trans-
mission Chief Curry keyed his microphone and paused for a
moment before he talked. This allowed the sounds of the
sirens to come through with significant volume. When he
yelled into the microphone, the relative level of his voice
659
was higher at the microphone than was the sound of the
sirens. The automatic gain control circuit in the trans-
mitter then adjusted the audio gain in the accordance with
the highest sound level received and, thereby, reduced
the preceived level of the sirens. In the second trans-
mission, the sirens are faint because Chief Curry vocalized
immediately after keying the transmitter . )
At this point, I had determined that the sound of the
sirens had begun within a few seconds of the shots, as stated
by Chief Curry and confirmed by the sounds from the Channel
#2 tape. If the motorcycle with the open microphone had
been a part of the motorcade it would have transmitted the
sounds of the sirens immediately. I had determined, further,
that the sounds of the sirens were first audible in the open
microphone transmission 2 or 3 minutes later than the pre-
sumed time of the shots, meaning, if the presumption of the
time of the shots is correct, that the motorcycle with the
open microphone on Channel #1 was located at or near the
point where the motorcycle would be approximately 2 minutes
after they had departed Dealey Plaza for Parkland Hospital.
It is now necessary to deal with the presumption of the
time the shots occurred.
From previous testimony, it has been established that
the Channel /^1 dispatcher read from one clock; that the
Channel -2 dispatcher read from a second clock; that the
clocks were analog (i.e., time is displayed by continous
660
movement of hour and minute hands) ; that they are synchronized
once a month; and that the two clocks may differ by as much
as a minute. Channel #1 taping was continuous; Channel #2
taping was initiated by an incoming or outgoing transmission
and terminated following the end of the transmission. Thus,
events which are not timed designated can be timed from a
timed designation on Channel #1, but similar undesignated
events on Channel #2 cannot be timed from a timed designated
event, unless it can be shown that the transmissions are
sufficiently continuous that the recorder remains in con-
tinuous operation. Additionally it must be considered that
different dispatchers may use a slightly different system
for determining the minutes which will be designated. For
example, one dispatcher may consider that 12:20 will not be
called until the minute hand has reached 20 and at all times
will be designated 12:20 until the minute hand reaches 21.
Another dispatcher may consider that when the half minute
has arrived, the call will be for the next whole minute.
In this case the dispatcher would designate 12:20 from 12:19
and 30 seconds until 12:20 and 30 seconds.
In attempting to identify the relationship between the
time of the shots and other significant events, it is nec-
essary to determine the time of the events on Channel rf 1
by Channel 1 time, the time of the events on Channel #2
by Channel #2 time, and the correlation between Channel #1
661
time and Channel #2 time, since there are no events on Channel
#1 which pin point the time of the shots. The most significant
event on Channel ^2 is Chief Currys' call that they are preceding
to the hospital, since this is known to have occurred a few
seconds after the shots. The beginning of the sounds of
sirens on Channel #1 is a significant event, as previously
discussed. Also significant is the sound of a carillon type
bell on Channel #1, since this allows determination of the
time interval between the 10 second period considered by
BB^N to contain the impluses which may represent the sound of
the shots and the beginning of the sound of the sirens. In
order to establish a base time for Channel #1, time desig-
nations by Channel #1 dispatcher of 12:26, 12:27, a second
12:27, and 12:28 are used. Considering the two approaches,
previously discussed, to designating the time and the inter-
vals between the calls, the following matrix results:
SEE THE CHART DISPLAYED IN FIGURE 1 ON THE FOLLOWING PAGE.
The dispatcher reported time is designated on lines 1
through 4. The interval is at interval timed from the tape
between the dispatcher reported times. Columns A and B
assume that the dispatcher changes his designation on the
half minute and columns C and D assume that the dispatcher
changes his designation on the even minute.
Starting with line ^1, the dispatchers called desig-
nation is 12:26. This causes column A to be 12:25::30 and
35-379 0 - 79-42
FIG#
662
29 PM 12:2?::00 PM
663
and column B to be 12:26:: 29. For the designation change on
the minute, column C is 12:26::00 and column D is 12:26::59.
The subsequent entries in columns A through D are arrived at
by adding the measured interval to the line one times. Thus,
i£ the dispatcher called 12:26 at 12:25: :30, as designated
in column A as the earliest Channel #1 clock time when the
designation could have been made, then the line #2 time,
occurring 20 measured seconds later must be 12:25:: 50 and
line #3, 18 seconds later, must be 12:26: :08, and so forth.
In examining to see whether the three designated times
could have been called times indicated in the four lettered
columns, we can exclude column A times, since 12:27 (line #2)
would not have been called at 12:25: :50; 12:27 (line #3)
would not have been called at 12:26: : 08 ; and 12:28 (line #4)
would not have been called at 12:26: :30.
Column B is marginally acceptable. 12:26:;49 would be
called 12:27 (line #2); 12:27::07 would be called 12:27
(line #3); and 12:27::29 could be called 12:28 (line #4).
Column C is not acceptable, since, under the system
represented by column C and D, 12: 26 :: 20 would not be called
12:27 (line #2); 12:26: :38 would not be called 12:27 (line #3)
and 12:27::00 would not be called 12:28 (line #4).
Column D is marginally acceptable under this system,
since 12:27::19 would be called 12:27 (line #2); 12:27::37
would be called 12:27 (line ^^3); and 12:27 : : 59 could be
(364
called 12:28 (line #4) .
We can now locate either of these times within a 30
second period to Channel #1 clock time and can, and there-
fore, measure the time intervals from either of these 4
events to any other event on the Channel #1 tape and, there-
by, locate these other events within 30 seconds of the
Channel ?1 clock time.
Using the 12:26 designation , we have determined that
the transmission occurred between 12 : 26: : 29 and 12 : 26 : : 59 .
The measured time for this event to the bell is 4 minutes
and 15 seconds and to the beginning of the sirens is 6 minutes
and 2 seconds.
According to BB^N, the first impluse, which they con-
sidered may represent a shot, occurred 16 seconds before
the sound of the bell and the last impluse, which they con-
sidered may represent a shot, occurred 6 seconds before the
sound of the bell.
The chart in Figure 2 on the following page lists
these events i^i the time period in which they occurred.
It is interesting to note that BB^N, using Least
Square Analysis, a refined averaging process, computed the
time of the first possible shot impluse as occurring at
1 2:30: :4 7 , Channel /^1 clock time. My range for the same
point is 12:50: :38 to 12:31: :08, with a mean (average) of
665
666
12:30: :53. Since we differ by only 6 seconds for our averages,
our results are mutually supportive.
An interim conclusion may be made at this point:
a. If the motorcycle with the open microphone
were a part of the motorcade, it would have
picked up the sounds of the sirens as soon
as they began.
b. The sirens began a few seconds after the
shooting .
c. The open microphone produced the taped sound
of the siren at approximately 12 : 32 ::46 (plus
or minus 15 seconds), Channel #1 clock time.
d. Therefore, if the motorcycle were in the motor-
cade, the shots occurred a few seconds before
12:32: :46. Since BB§N analyzed the 10 second
section starting at approximately 12:30: : 53 ,
Channel #1 clock time, almost 2 minutes before
the shots would have been fired, it may be
stated definitively that any impluses detected
during that 10 second period were not the
result of shots recorded by the open micro-
phone. Of course, if the motorcycle were not
within the motorcade, it did not record shots
at any time.
I will return now to the primary problem of determining
if the motorcycle open microphone could have transmitted the
sound of the shots at any time (i.e., if the motorcycle were
with the motorcade when it was in Dealey Plaza) .
BB§N has determined by Least Square Analysis of trans-
missions giving time designations on Channel #2 that the
approximate time of the assassination was 12:30 and 12
seconds, Channel #2 time. Since this conclusion was arriA^ed
at based upon essentially continuous running of the Channel
^2 recorder, it would seem to be a reasonably accurate
667
estimate. Accepting it, for the moment, as accurate, and
allowing a worst side error between Channel #1 and Channel #2
of 1 minute in either direction, the time of the assassination
by the Channel #1 clock would be between 12:29: :12 and 12:31: :12.
Allowing 10 seconds between the time of the assassination and
the time the sirens were turned on and Chief Curry made his
call, the latest the sirens could have started, by Channel
#1 clock time would have been 12:31:: 22, If the motorcycle
with the open microphone were with the motorcade, we would
hear the sound of the sirens on the Channe 1 #1 tape at that
time, instead of between 12: 32:: 31 and 12:33:: 01. In other
words, the Channel #1 and Channel #2 clocks would have to be
a full minute apart and the Least Square Analysis would
have to be a minute to a minute and a half in error over a
6 minute analysis, and both events cumulative (in the same
direction). Since this seems inconceivable, it is concluded
that there is almost no possiblity that the motorcycle was
with the motorcade.
Since this conclusion cannot be stated quite as deci-
sively, based upon the time elements, as the previous interim
conclusion, the following supportive evidence is provided.
a. The open microphone was on Channel #1, the
normal police channel. The motorcade
vehicles were on Channel #2, the special
motorcade channel. If the motorcycle
with the open microphone were with the
motorcade, the transmission should have
been on Channel #2.
668
b. The sound of the sirens on the Channel #1
tape increases in volume and then fades
out as would be expected if the motorcade
were approaching , passing, and leaving
the location of the open microphone .
c. The sound of the bell on the Channel #1
tape requires that a bell be located
with an acoustical range of the open
microphone. There was no such bell
in or near Dealey Plaza. While it has
not been identified as the same bell,
there was a bell in the tower of the
Lucas Baptist Church, 4435 Rosewood
(near the intersection of Lucas and
Rosewood), Dallas, Texas, located
0.6 miles from the position of the
designation of a three wheel motor-
cycle on traffic control duty on
the Stemmons overpass over Idustrial
Boulevard .
d. Several three wheel motorcycles were
positioned in or around the Trade
Mart and specifically in the area of
the Stemmons Expressway and Industrial.
One motorcycle officer has stated
to me unequivocally that he was as-
signed and was specifically at the
Stemmons and Industrial overpass and saw
the motorcade traveling towards him,
and away from him, going towards Hines
Boulevard, as they were heading towards
Parkland Hospital. He also stated
to me that it is quite possible that
it could have been his microphone
keyed as he had several problems
with his radio of the same nature
in the past.
e. The following transcript is of a
transmission I located on Channel #2
and recorded on the tape recording
included with this report for your
review .
669
DISPATCH:
15 CAR 2:
DISPATCH:
15 CAR 2:
DISPATCH:
15 CAR 2.
15 CAR 2.
There is a motorcycle officer up on Stemmons
with his mike stuck open on Channel #1. Could
you send someone up there to tell him to shut
it off?
10-4
12: 34
670
CONCLUSION
A. It is concluded that the noise impluses
detected during the period immediately
preceding the sound of the bell were
not shots.
B. It is concluded that the motorcycle with
the open microphone on Channel #1 was not
a part of the motorcade , but was in f act ,
located along the route of the motorcade
from Dealey Plaza to Parkland Hospital.
Additional information regarding my acoustical analysis,
my investigative analysis , and my further investigation as to
the location and identity of the keyed open microphone and
spectrum analysis of the bell located at the Lucas Baptist
Church, and questions for Dr. Barger (regarding his analysis
et al) , would be supplied upon an additional request.
671
Mr. Wolf. Dr. Barger, have you had an opportunity to review
the report submitted by Mr. Pellicano?
Dr. Barger. I have read it.
Mr. Wolf. I would like to read parts of this report to you and
ask you to comment on it. Mr. Pellicano characterizes his work as
a deduction from your testimony, in addition to some independent
investigation of his own. The first portion I would like to read is on
page 4. I will read the paragraph and ask you to comment. It says:
The first significant finding involved the sound of the motorcade sirens on the
channel 1 tape. If the motorcycle with the open microphone had been with the
motorcade, it would be expected that the sirens' sound would have started at full
volume and, if the motorcycle had continued with the motorcade, would have
continued for the trip to Parkland Hospital. On the other hand, if the motorcycle
had remained at Dealey Plaza, the sounds would have started at full volume and
the volume would have decreased as the motorcade pulled away. The sounds of the
siren on the tape, however, seem to increase, peak, and decrease, as if they were
approaching, passing, and leaving the open microphone position. While this observa-
tion is admittedly somewhat subjective, if true it could indicate that the motorcycle
was not with the motorcade, but was at some point along or near the route taken by
the motorcade on its way to the Parkland Hospital.
Can you comment on that, please?
Dr. Barger. I can't remember all that, but while I was still
focusing on what you were saying, the statement was made that it
would be expected that the motorcycle radio that we have placed in
the motorcade would pick up the sounds of the siren on the chiefs
car that would presumably have been turned on just after the
shooting. I think I heard that. Is that it?
Mr. Wolf. That is correct.
Dr. Barger. The chiefs car was in front of the Presidential
limousine and would have been at this time at the underpass, or
just beyond, a distance of at least 300 feet from the position of the
motorcycle as we have placed it. Now the sound of a siren 300 feet
away from a running motorcycle with as much background noise
as there was in the Plaza at that time would not have been audi-
ble. In other words, I would dis^ree with the assumption that it
could be heard. A little simple arithmetic indicates since the source
level of sirens is around 120 decibels and the transmission loss
from that particular chief of police car to the motorcycle would
have to be at least 40 decibels, the sound pressure level of the siren
at the position of the motorcycle could not have exceeded about 80
decibels, but we have seen that insensitive direction of the motorcy-
cle microphone, it being a directional microphone and not sensitive
to sounds from the front, was pointed at the chiefs car. So that
received sound level of 80 decibels would be considerably less than
the ambient noise level in the microphone at that time, which was
90 decibels, and also would have been coming in on the insensitive
access of the microphone. So I don't believe that that assumption
that you would hear this siren is true. That was not a very short
answer.
Mr. Wolf. So, therefore, you would also disagree with Mr. Pelli-
cano's deduction that since the sound of the sirens occurred some-
where in the vicinity of 12:33, 2 or 3 minutes after the presumed
shots, the motorcycle could not have been in Dealey Plaza?
Dr. Barger. Yes.
672
Mr. Wolf. I would like now to read from page 14 of the submis-
sion to the committee and ask you to comment upon this state-
ment. It concerns a question I believe Congressman Dodd in part
addressed this morning about the ringing of a bell that appears on
the tape. The report states:
The sound of the bell on the channel 1 tape requires that a bell be located within
an acoustical range of the open microphone. There was no such bell in or near
Dealey Plaza. While it has not been identified as the same bell, there was a bell in
the tower of the Lucas Baptist Church, 4435 Rosewood (near the intersection of
Lucas and Rosewood), Dallas, Tex., located 0.6 miles from the position of the desig-
nation of a three-wheel motorcycle on traffic control duty on the Stemmons over-
pass over Industrial Boulevard.
Can you comment on that passage?
Dr. Barger. The sound of the bell occurred a few seconds after
the time of the fourth shot. I don't remember exactly when. It
indicates that there was a transmitter on a motorcycle or perhaps
in a squad car or possibly also a walkie-talkie, but a transmitter
that was transmitting a little after the fourth shot that was within
sound range, audible range, of a bell. I agree completely with
Officer McLain's statement that more than one transmitter can
share a receiver at one time. This is true whenever the strength of
the carriers of all of the radios in question are within the capture
ratio of the receiver in their intensity.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Dr. Barger. I would now like to address
the testimony Professors Weiss and Aschkenasy gave this morning.
Have you had an opportunity to review the work of Professors
Weiss and Aschkenasy?
Dr. Barger. Yes; I have.
Mr. Wolf. What did you do to review independently their work
that was done for this committee?
Dr. Barger. In the first place, shortly after my testimony at the
previous hearing, I met with Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy
and members of the committee staff, to discuss how best we might
reduce the uncertainty in the results that we had obtained at that
time, in particular relating to the possibility of a third shot, which
is listed in green in that exhibit. We contributed in that discussion
to the concept of an analytical extension of our work, which is, in
fact, the analytical extension that they carried out. So we were
familiar with the parameters that they would need to know and
also with the procedure that they intended to follow. I asked them
what parameters they were using and found in each case that I
agreed with them. In other words, we checked their procedures and
the parameters that they used.
In addition, and perhaps most importantly, at the stage where
they had finished with all their strings — as they were illustrating
this morning — and had identified the echo-producing objects in the
plaza that caused the echoes at positions near microphone 4 there,
where we found the shot may have occurred and where it may
have been received, we looked at those echo-producing objects for
that location that they found with their very accurate and diligent
procedure and made a judgment about each one as to whether it
would be able to produce an echo of sufficient strength to be heard
in the motorcycle microphone, considering the direction from
which it had to arrive at the motorcycle microphone, considering
673
what we now know the direction the microphone is pointing at that
time. We found that the echo-producing objects that they identified
were reasonable and would, in fact, produce echoes of sufficient
strength to be seen, or heard, I should say.
Mr. Wolf. In your testimony on September 11, addressing par-
ticularly the third impulse in the Dallas Police dispatch tape, you
stated that the probability of this being a shot from the grassy
knoll was 50-50. Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy, today,
whose testimony you heard, stated that the probability of this
being a shot from the grassy knoll was 95 percent or better. You
have reviewed the work of Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy.
Do you agree with their assessment?
Dr. Barger. Yes; once we checked their procedures, their param-
eters and their echo-producing objects, we received from them the
results of their match. Drs. Kalikow, Rhyne, and Mr. Schmidt and
I, at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, reviewed their results, and we
concluded that they had successfully achieved a match having a
correlation coefficient of 77, and you remember that was the
number I was using of goodness of match. We also found that they
had done this with only a plus or minus one one-thousandth of a
second error for each match, whereas we had used a plus or minus
six one-thousandths of a second error, if you will, or acceptance
window as Professor Weiss called it, in order to achieve our
matches. Now, the reason that we used the large acceptance
window of six one-thousandths of a second was because we didn^t
know, as I said, exactly where the motorcycle was. The reason they
were able to lower theirs to one one-thousandth of a second was
because they found exactly where it was by the procedure they
described this morning. The effect of reducing this acceptance
window is to greatly reduce the likelihood that noise bursts that
occur could mimic the fingerprint of a shot from any place and
received at that microphone. It reduces it very substantially. In
other words, in the terminology that I used last time, their ability
to achieve this match within plus or minus one one-thousandth of 1
second reduces the false alarm rate substantially. In other words,
we had a large false alarm rate because we had a large acceptance
window because we didn't know exactly where the motorcycle was.
That gave us a large false alarm rate. They corrected that problem
by lowering the acceptance window. There is another feature of
that score besides the acceptance window. That is important. That
is the value of the correlation coefficient achieved. As I said, we
would not accept as a potential match any correlation coefficient
that was less than one-half. But we didn't require it to be one,
either, which is what it would be if there was no noise. Noise is the
thing that causes the correlation coefficient to be less than one.
Noise is on the Dallas Police recording. Professors Weiss and Asch-
kenasy did nothing to reduce the noise, so I would not have expect-
ed they would have increased the correlation coefficient. In fact,
they accepted more noise than we did, and that could have affected
the correlation coefficient, which should have gone down. So their
correlation coefficient, while high, was not unity. On the other
hand, the false alarm rate one would expect from their match,
which was so tight, this would make the likelihood of random noise
674
bursts to fit all 10 of those to within plus or minus one one-
thousandth very small. I think I forgot the question.
Mr. Wolf. Your ability to state with 95-percent certainty, now,
what was only a 50-50-percent probability in September was, in
essence, due to the narrowing of the match time from six one-
thousandths of a second to one one- thousandth of a second. Is that,
in essence, correct?
Dr. Barger. Yes, sir. After looking at what they had done, and
the fact they had maintained a high correlation coefficient while
reducing the acceptance window, resulted in our independent cal-
culation of the expectancy that they could have achieved the match
they got only 5 percent of the time by random if it had just been
noise on the tape and not a gunshot from that place. That is why
we stated independently, although their number was quite similar
to ours, that we felt that the likelihood of there having been a gun
shot from that knoll and received at that point now to be about 95
percent or possibly better.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you very much, Dr. Barger. I have no further
questions.
Mr. Preyer [presiding]. Dr. Barger, we appreciate your being
here again. I was interested in Mr. Wolf s questions to you at the
outset about the Kent State hearings and your work there. There
has been a lot of discussion of the acoustics technique as a relative-
ly new technique applying old principles and that the Kent State
case was perhaps the first in which it was applied. Now, I under-
stood you to say that in that case your analysis of the timing and
location of the shots was stipulated as being correct and was ad-
mitted into evidence.
Dr. Barger. That is correct.
Mr. Preyer. Was that a criminal case? What was the nature of
the case?
Dr. Barger. I should know the answer to that, of course; howev-
er, I am a physicist. It was an indictment brought by a Federal
court, I believe. You know you might, if you would, ask that
question of the Chief Counsel of this committee. He might be able
to answer that better.
Mr. Blakey. I think Dr. Barger is correct. The matter was con-
sidered both in the State and Federal level. My memory is that
there was a Federal indictment returned under the Civil Rights
Act, and I think ultimately the jury found the guardsmen not
guilty. The case has also been tried at the civil level in the State,
and it is presently in litigation now.
Dr. Barger. This was not the civil case.
Mr. Preyer. What I was getting at was how your acoustics
testimony was used. Could you briefly outline to us what it
showed? Were you able to locate individuals who could have fired
shots from your acoustic study?
Dr. Barger. What we did was locate the physical positions where
rifles were fired from, where the first one was fired from, the
second one, the third, and the fourth. Then it was quite a fusillade,
and it got indistinct. But we located the physical positions and
someone else with photographic evidence made the connections
between individuals and physical locations. Exactly how they did
that and in what way that was used, I don't know.
675
Mr. Preyer. Do you recall, and perhaps this is unfair to ask a
scientist rather than a lawyer, but do you recall in what form the
judge charged the jury concerning that acoustics testimony, as to
how they could consider it?
Dr. Barger. Well, in fact, Judge Pryer — I was there, assuming
that I would be testifying. I had written my results into a record
which had been examined by both sides. When it was time to call
me, the defense stipulated the information in the report. So I went
home. However, as I recall, I don't know what the judge said. I
went home at that point.
Mr. Preyer. Well, it sounds as if your acoustics testimony actual-
ly located the direction of the shot and then the photographs
simply put the name of the person located there.
Dr. Barger. That is correct.
Mr. Preyer. In other words, that was — your testimony was key, I
would think.
Mr. Devine. Will you yield?
Mr. Preyer. I will be glad to.
Mr. Devine. Dr. Barger, was the stipulation that your testimony
would be so-and-so if you testified, or was the stipulation as to the
accuracy of your testimony? There are two different kinds of stipu-
lations. One would be if Dr. Barger testified, he would say thus and
so. Another stipulation is one by agreement that it is agreed that
your testimony which was supplied was accurate.
Dr. Barger. I just don't feel that I can answer that question. I
don’t know that for sure.
Mr. Devine. Thank you.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you, Mr. Devine.
Mr. Fauntroy?
Mr. Fauntroy. Thank you.
Dr. Barger, you found the fingerprints of four outbursts that you
believe to have been supersonic shots, is that so?
Dr. Barger. No; let me — that is a good question.
These echo patterns that I called, suggested might be called
fingerprints, can contain a precursor which is an end wave or a
shock wave caused by a supersonic bullet, or they might not. If the
rifle was — did, in fact, fire a supersonic bullet, and if the trajectory
of the bullet was at an angle from the receiver that was less than
about 80 degrees, you would see that precursor, the end wave, the
shock wave caused by the supersonic bullet. If the microphone, in
effect, was behind the rifleman and the trajectory was away from
the microphone, you would not see that precursor, even though it
was a supersonic bullet.
Mr. Fauntroy. All right. On the charts which Dr. Weiss set
before us we saw the indication of a burst preceded by
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Fauntroy [continuing]. What was described to us as shock
waves.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Fauntroy. Could those lines have been produced by noise
other than that of shock waves?
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Fauntroy. What indication do you have from the patterns
that you noticed in the four shots that would lead you to suggest to
676
us that in all probability those waves were shock waves or those
lines were produced by shock waves?
Dr. Barger. Yes; well, your question is right at the heart of the
matter. In the fourth shot our findings indicate that that is in all
probability a shot from the sixth floor of the Texas depository at
the vicinity of the limousine, near frame 313.
Now, we know the muzzle velocity of that rifle, and so now we
can look at our fingerprint smudged on the Dallas police tape, and
we can see the indication of a shock wave that precurses those
impulses, and we can calculate when, you know, when it should
occur because we know everything about it, we know all of the
geometry and the speed of the bullet and it calculates out just
right. So we know what a shock wave looks like on that Dallas
police tape recording, because we are virtually certain that we see
it on the fourth shot, as we should.
Now, the precursor that Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy
were looking at this morning looks just like that, looks like it could
be, it looks like a shock wave. It occurs at a time before what
appears to be a muzzle blast that is consistent with reasonable
trajectories and muzzle velocities, so it is entirely consistent with
the shock wave, with the impulse made by a supersonic bullet fired
from a rifle.
Mr. Fauntroy. So in short, your answer is that the shock waves
which we have identified on the shots that we know about resem-
ble sufficiently the shot No. 3 to conclude that that, too, was in all
probability a shock wave?
Dr. Barger. Yes. That is just what I said. You asked the question
a little differently the first time.
Mr. Fauntroy. I know it.
Dr. Barger. And let me answer that, also.
You asked if there is anything else that could resemble the shock
wave of a supersonic bullet, and my answer would have to be yes,
it is possible that a burst of static would occur of that amplitude
and at that time. And, therefore, it is conceivable that although
that is consistent with being a shock wave in any way, it is conceiv-
able also that that is a noise burst.
Having said all of that, I feel compelled to answer your next
question, which is how likely is that to be a noise burst. Well, the
best I can do here, and I think it is the best anyone could do, is to
look at the record to find what is called the marking rate, in other
words, the average number of such noise bursts that occur in a
unit period of time. In other words, how many of those per second
occur anyway?
Well, you answer that question by looking at someplace on the
tape where there may be a few impulses, but they are clearly not
the fingerprints of gunshots, and so you look there and you say
how rapidly do things like this occur that resemble end waves.
Well, I have done this, as this was going to be your next question,
and I had to have an answer for it. It appears in a very conserva-
tive way that these are happening, you have this amplitude that
Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy showed on that exhibit.
In fact, it probably would not hurt to have that exhibit up, I
have no idea what the number is, but it is the one with all the
wiggly lines, not to suggest that they only had one exhibit with
677
wiggly lines. But in any case, the precursor that we are talking
about only, a similar precursor when they are obviously noise
bursts certainly occur no more often than about every 120 one-
thousandths of a second.
Now, the total time span over which a noise burst could mimic a
shock wave, given any reasonable muzzle velocity and direction of
the fire, is on the order of 25 to 30 one-thousandths of a second.
And so by a fairly straightforward chain of logic, the odds that a
noise burst of those characteristics falling into that time span so
they could mimic a shock wave are less than one in four, probably
one in five, and I get that simply from observing the marking rate
or the rate at which random noise bursts occur. That is the one
that might conceivably mimic a shock wave.
Mr. Fauntroy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know my time has
expired.
Mr. Preyer. Thank you. Mr. Devine.
Mr. Devine. I just have a couple of short questions.
Doctor, when you had your reenactment on August 20, do you
recall what the temperature was?
Dr. Barger. It was very hot. It varied. At the beginning of the
day when we were testing in the microphone right down near Main
Street it was about 73“, I recall, the first time I looked. At the time
we finished, we were over on Elm Street, it was noon, and it was 90°
the last time I looked.
Mr. Devine. There was a lot of fuss made this morning about
what the temperature was on November 22, and they concluded it
was roughly 65°?
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Devine. In your reenactment, would that make any differ-
ence in your conclusion, the fact that the temperature is measur-
ably different?
Dr. Barger. Yes; the speed of sound is important to my process,
and, therefore, it has to be computed correctly. Now, of course, the
relevant choice in this, what is the precision that one needs in
order to achieve the purpose that we have set out to achieve? In
the case of the reconstruction, as used by Professor Weiss and Mr.
Aschkenasy, they needed to have that temperature accurate
enough so that when they swung their strings around they would
hit something at all, because the only thing that they used my data
for other than the fact that I told them about where the motorcycle
was, you know, within 18 feet, was what that one echo pattern
looked like, that one fingerprint from microphone 4, and if they
did, if I had known that it was 90° when I fired that shot, but told
them it was 65°, their string would have come up short, and it would
have missed that building, and so it was necessary to get it approxi-
mately correct.
Now, the question really is how correct does it have to be, how
accurate?
Now, it is easy to show, since the speed of sound goes like the
square root of the absolute temperature, that if you make a 5° error
in the temperature, then your error in speed of sound will be one-
half of 1 percent.
Now, Professor Blakey correctly described the process by which
I determined that it was 65° during the assassination. Supposing
35-3711 O
678
it were 70°. I think 5° is the outside of our uncertainty. Then the
error in the sound speed would be one-half of 1 percent. Now, since
my uncertainty in location was 18 feet, and since the difference in
travel distance of sound over the paths we are talking about at the
level of one-half of 1 percent is only 2g inches, I cared not one whit
about one-half-of- 1-percent errors in the sound speed. On the other
hand, the whole purpose of Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy's
procedure was to add precision to the procedure that we developed,
analytically to compute with great precision and in very narrow time
windows where these echoes must fall if, in fact, fingerprint compari-
son is to be declared a valid match. And they achieved, as I recall, a
location accuracy of something like plus or minus 6 to 10 inches. So
the 2- or 3-inch error that could be induced by a 5° uncertainty is
scarcely noticeable, even to them.
Mr. Devine. In another vein, Dr. Barger, I think the testimony
originally was that Officer McLain was putting along at 11 or 12
miles an hour in the motorcade. After the shot was fired they took
off for Parkland Hospital when it was necessary for them to rev up
and had trouble catching the limousine. Did I understand you to
say that even with the open mike that there was no measurable
difference in motorcycle noise, that the decibels were such that it
wouldn't make any difference if we are talking about that motorcy-
cle having the open mike on it? It would seem to me as a layman
that there would be considerably more motorcycle noise when he
took off for Parkland Hospital.
Dr. Barger. Well,. there definitely was. I believe in my previous
testimony I did not focus on what the motorcycle may or may not
have done after the shooting on the basis of the sound that it
made. On the other hand, you have just focused me on that.
The noise level of the motorcycle as perceived through the radio
was rather high up until about 2, about 3 seconds before the first
shot was fired. In other words, the motorcycles have greatly re-
duced speed 3 seconds before the first shot was fired, which was a
very fortunate thing in the sense that it made it easier to see these
smudged fingerprints of gunfire, because otherwise they would
have been more obscured by the noise.
Now, that motorcycle noise stayed down in this reduced level, it
did not go off, it stayed down, but it stayed down at this reduced
level, and it was reduced by about 10 decibels, which we meas-
ured — the noise level was reduced by 10 — decibels, and it stayed
that way for about 30 seconds, 30 or 40 seconds, and then it rose
again to as loud a level as it had previously been and even greater,
and stayed that way for several minutes. In other words, the mo-
torcycle stayed at a low speed for less than a minute, certainly,
about a half a minute, after the shots, and then it speed^ up again
and it went even faster than it had before, and it continued to do
that for at least 2 minutes.
Mr. Devine. Well, you do not have any trouble then in identify-
ing Officer McLain's motorcycle as the one on which the open mike
existed. Is that correct?
Dr. Barger. Well, I have no way of knowing from the sounds
that came through the radio what motorcycle it was that was
making that noise, that is correct.
679
Mr. Devine. But you were here when Dr. Weiss testified this
morning. Did you agree with his conclusions on that?
Dr. Barger. I think I would be safe if I asked you to remind me
what his conclusions were on that. My attention may have wan-
dered.
Mr. Devine. If my recollection is correct, I think he said it was
logical to assume that the motorcycle was in the position where
Detective McLain was or Officer McLain was to show the results
that appeared on their charts and findings. At least that is my
assumption from having listened to him.
Dr. Barger. I am sorry. I am not certain enough that I under-
stand that question that I should attempt to answer it.
Mr. Devine. Well, the bottom line is this: we have established
without much question that there was an open mike on a motorcy-
cle someplace.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Devine. And it is important to identify what open mike was
recording the shots from 1, 2 and 4 as well as the No. 3 shot which
is alleged to have come from the grassy knoll.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Devine. Now, that is the receiver, that mike is the receiver.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Devine. It is important to identify it, and apparently Dr.
Weiss and his colleague are satisfied that it was the motorcycle
behind the limousine on the left side, and I was wondering if your
findings would follow that same logic.
Dr. Barger. Yes, yes, yes.
I thought that was what your question was. I just wanted to
make sure.
The position that we had originally found for the motorcycle as a
function of time, we do not feel our estimate of the motorcycle
position, I do not believe is modified by Professor Weiss and Mr.
Aschkenasy's testimony. In fact, perhaps corroborated. And I, in
listening to Officer McLain, I find that his memory of where he
was relative to the time of the shooting does, in fact, correspond
with the position where we found a motorcycle was, and since he
did not know of any, he did not report a motorcycle within 5 or 10
feet of him, it must have been him.
Mr. Devine. Right. Thank you very much.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd.
Mr. Dodd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was tempted to ask you now to translate everything you have
just said for the last 20 minutes in layman’s terms. I noticed your
definition of a correlation coefficient is the number of echoes
matched with impulses over the square root of the number of
echoes times the number of impulses.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. I thought that was what your answer would be.
Dr. Barger. Oh.
Mr. Dodd. I wanted to give you a chance to sound positive. One is
the perfect match, that is when you would have between the Dalleis
Police Department tape and the predicted tape, if they matched
absolutely exactly, you would end up with 1.
680
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. So we are talking 0.7's, 0.8's, 0.6's, and 0.5's; we are
coming within that percentage of a perfect match.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. OK. I would like to take first of all, if I could, on the
very first shock wave that you record, there is no muzzle velocity
that appears, or is it the shock wave that I am distinguishing?
Anyway, there is on that first strong impulse that you identified
originally as coming from the Texas School Book Depository, it
lacks that shock wave.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. You explained that as being the fact that the receiver,
in this case the motorcycle, was probably not in proper enough
position to pick up the cone.
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. Is that correct?
Dr. Barger. That is correct.
Mr. ZwDD. How can you explain it within 1.6 seconds immediate-
ly thereafter we get that kind of an impulse?
Dr. Barger. May I walk over there and
Mr. Dodd. Sure.
Dr. Barger. The position that we estimate as the motorcycle
position at the time of the first shot is about here. The first, the
trajectory of the first shot would be about as indicated by this
pointer because the limousine was over here at about, oh, in the
vicinity somewhere around 160, I believe.
Now, this angle from the trajectory to the microphone, if it is
greater than, in fact, 60 degrees for a Mach 2 bullet, you will not
hear it, and that angle is just slightly greater. So you are right on
the edge of hearing that shock wave. It would be very weak, since
you are on the edge, so you undoubtedly would not see it.
After the 1.6 seconds that you have described, at a speed of 11
miles an hour, I believe that is
Mr. Dodd. Now he is slowing down, he is coming around the
curve now.
Dr. Barger. Correct, correct, and he has, according to our match-
ing procedure, achieved a position somewhere between 2.6 and 2.10;
2.10 is over here, and 2.6 is here. So he has moved to somewhere
around here where I indicated on the red dot. That is still, is just
on the edge of the 60® angle, and so you would not expect to see
it, and you do not. The first two do not show a precursor that could
be considered to be an end wave from a supersonic trajectory.
Now, on the third one, however, the motorcycle had achieved a
position which, in my — well, I mislabeled that last time, I should
have been right here between 4 and 5, near 4, this is where the
motorcycle was at the time of the third shot. That one appears to
have emanated from here, and that is well within that angle, in
other words that shock wave will come right back by and hit it.
The fourth, by the time the fourth shot was fired, the motorcycle is
here, and the shot came from the depository here, and you are
almost right underneath the flight path of the bullet, and, boy, and
that you would hear, and it is observed in the data.
Mr. Dodd. All right. Unless you want to stay there, I do not
know any reason why you have to, but let me ask you what I asked
681
Dr. Weiss this morning about the availability 15 years ago of the
expertise that you have used to arrive at the conclusion you did in
September and again today. Could the Warren Commission have
conducted similar tests then with the available information they
had in 1963-64 and have arrived at a similar conclusion that you
and Dr. Weiss have arrived at?
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Dodd. There has not been any significant improvement in
the science that would have prohibited them from utilizing this
kind of testing?
Dr. Barger. No.
Mr. Dodd. OK.
We have heard and we keep on repeating it ourselves, and I
asked the question of Dr. Weiss, and I will ask it again of you, we
have talked about the probability of the third impulse, in fact, all
four impulses that were talked about, but the third impulse par-
ticularly today, is a loud noise from the grassy knoll, and that is 95
percent sure, and I do not think I got an answer this morning, I
may not have pursued it far enough, what is the probability that,
that our noise from the grassy knoll was, in fact, a rifle shot?
Dr. Barger. Yes. Well, Congressman Fauntroy was working on
that one, too. Our independent estimate of the probability that an
impulsive sound behind the fence on that knoll of loudness as great
as that from a rifle that was, in fact, discharged and received
where we have indicated, is 95 percent or better. Now I did not say
a rifle, I said an impulse that is as loud as one. And now, you know
that maybe
Mr. Dodd. We have kept on talking about 95-percent probability
that a rifle shot is being fired. I am assuming the rifle shot, and I
am wond^ing whether or not we can assume the same to be a
probability.
Dr. Barger. I am not sure I said that.
Mr. Dodd, We have been, at least.
Dr. Barger. We find that the likelihood that an impulsive noise
came from that location and was received where we indicated or
actually where Weiss and Aschkenasy indicated, you know, which
is 5 feet away from where we had estimated, and that is as loud as
a rifle, is 95 percent or better.
Now, I am not prepared to tell you how many cherry bombs in
series it takes to simulate a rifle, because I have not experimented
with those since the days of my youth. But the fact is it is conceiv-
able that one could generate such a noise.
However, those cherry bombs would not emanate a supersonic
trajectory which would cause a shock wave, which is indicated in
the data. So when I asked Congressman — answered, I mean — when
I answered Congressman Fauntroy's question about the likelihood
that that impulse that seems to be a shock wave might, in fact, be
a noise burst thafs masquerading as a shock wave, I made an
estimate of how likely that would be, and I came out about one
chance in five, or an 80-percent probability that that is caused by a
muzzle blast and only a 20-percent probability that it was caused
by noise.
So, to answer your question, I think there is a 95-percent prob-
ability that a loud impulsive sound emanated from that point. But,
682
I have to multiply that by the probability that given there was a
noise, it was also a rifle. The only evidence I have that it was likely
to be is the presence of the shock wave.
Mr. Dodd. All right, but now
Dr. Barger. And that is a point approximately, if I may perform
that multiplication, I get something like 78 percent, so to answer
your question literally, I have to say my estimate is about 78
percent likely to be a rifle.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Dodd. May I proceed for an additional 2 minutes, Mr. Chair-
man?
Chairman Stokes, Without objection, the gentleman is recog-
nized 2 additional minutes.
Mr. Dodd. We have no end wave in 1 and 2.
Dr. Barger, Right.
Mr. Dodd. What does that do to the probability of that being a
rifle?
Dr. Barger. Nothing. We do not expect an end wave in 1 or 2
because the receiver is in the wrong position to hear it.
Mr, Dodd. OK. But does that not increase the probability that
there could be a like noise that would have created the same
impulse, since there was no recorded end wave?
Dr. Barger. If anything, it decreases it, because there was not
any like noise that popped up and masqueraded as a shock wave in
1 and 2. If there had I would have said, would have said no, no, no,
it should not be there, because the geometry is wrong. So if it was
there I would have said this is a noise burst masquerading as a
shock wave, but none did.
Mr. Dodd. Let me try and just wrap up this way with you. The
reason we are here today, in effect, is because back on September
11, when we finally got down to this third grouping that pointed to
the possibility of a shot coming from the grassy knoll, I forget
which member of the committee pursued you on this whole ques-
tion of probabilities then, but you arrived at the 50-50.
Dr. Barger. I think you took turns.
Mr. Dodd. Could you now go back for us, if you would, and give
us your assessment on all four of these impulses, with the degree of
probability again, now including the assessments or reassessments
of Dr. Weiss and associate.
Dr. Barger. Yes; the first point is that their refinement of our
technique that they applied to the third shot, which has indicated
that it in all likelihood was a shot, does not affect materially my
estimates of the likelihood on the other three.
Now, in case that answer boggles your mind — if it does not, I will
not elaborate.
Mr. Dodd. Oh, elaborate. If it does not mine, I am sure it does
somebody's.
Dr. Barger. OK. My reasoning had gone this way: I had
achieved 15 correlations over my threshold level of .5, each of
which was a potential shot. I d' not mean to say that. Each one
was a potential match with a test shot, and if several came at one
incident time, as they did, the> all together were just indicating
the same shot.
683
Since I had used the plus or minus 6 millisecond time window —
which might also be called, unelegantly I would say, a fudge
factor — it allows the test patterns from two adjacent microphones
to resemble one another, and, in fact, you do see that when we get
more than one correlation coefficient passing my threshold, that
they do tend to be from adjacent microphones.
In any case, 15 times our test for matches of fingerprints with or
smudge fingerprints were successful.
Now I went through an argument then with red X's that indicat-
ed that 6 of those 15 were certainly false alarms, the word that I
use to describe a situation when my matching process indicated a
match, when, in fact, it should not have, and I was using independ-
ent evidence from pure acoustical evidence in order to make the
judgment that those 6 were false alarms, as in fact, you may recall
that if one of them had not been a false alarm and in fact had been
true, the motorcycle would have had to go 55 miles an hour to get
from one place to another in the time that was available, and it
clearly did not do that.
So using that kind of reasoning, I found that 15 of those, 6 of
those 15, were obviously disjoint and, therefore, clearly false
alarms.
OK. I had 15, and 6 were obviously false. Therefore, I knew that
my system, which was designed to catch motorcycles, had a propen-
sity for false alarms. And what was that propensity, I had to make
a judgment. I said of that remaining nine that were not of the six
that I was sure were false alarms, some of those, too, must be false.
I judged that probably about 3 or 4, which would give me, or 2 or 3,
which would have given me 8 or 10 false alarms, and 6 or 7 correct
detections. That was a judgment, and so I said it is close enough to
be 50-50 that I will judge that the false alarm rate in this experi-
ment is 50 percent.
Now, when I had a shot indicated by one single match of my
fingerprint with the smudge print on the Dallas tape, the only one
I could only put a 50-percent probability on was that one. On the
other hand, the first shot had three that were not judged to be
false alarms.
Mr. Dodd. So what percentage would you give to that?
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has again expired. I
will permit the answer.
Dr. Barger. He will probably ask for more.
Mr. Dodd. What percentage, I am just trying to get back, does
this change all of the percentages you gave us?
Dr. Barger. This is a long-winded answer, because as indicated it
would be, but the answer is no, it does not change it and here is
why. I had made the judgment, if my false alarm rate was 50
percent the first time because I had six that I knew were false, and
I suspected there were a couple of others in there, and that made it
half false, half true, 50 percent.
. Now, all Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy have done is prove
that one of those is not false. That does not materially change that
situation, so I still think the false alarm rate is about 50 percent.
Now, when, if I make an assumption that each of the 15 events
that we see on that board are independent, then I or anyone else
can calculate the probabilities that each of those shots did occur. In
684
the case of the first one, where there were three indications of .5
each, that works out 87 Va percent likely, and one-eighth unlikely.
In the case of the second shot there were likewise three that were
not, three correlations that passed the test that were not im-
peached as obvious false alarms and, therefore, the operative or
probability on that one is also 87 percent. In the case of the last
one, there were two that were unimpeached, so the probability
works out to 75 percent, and in the case of the third one there was
only one, so that was 50, it was 50 percent.
And did I make a mistake on the second one? OK.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Dodd. I am not going to ask for any more time.
Chairman Stokes. Gentlemen, we are going to have to try to
move along a little faster here. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr.
Fithian.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We are sure, you are confident that the sounds, the shapes of the
sounds that you measured are gunshots, in plain language, that is
what you are telling us?
Dr. Barger. Quite confident, yes.
Mr. Fithian. And that is to the exclusion of any other sounds
short of a bunch of cherry bombs that would have set up that kind
of impulse, but would still have been missing for shots 3 and 4 the
shock wave, is that correct?
Dr. Barger. That is correct.
Mr. Fithian. Now, I am concerned that we clarify one thing. You
recall the Sunday evening preceding your testimony, before we met
and went over all this, and I apparently did not explore as much as
I should have with you the probability questions that came up the
next day. And, therefore, I was a little bit dismayed that we
dropped to 50-50.
Since we are closing out this investigation now, I do not mean to
be harsh, but I want to quote back to you what you told this
committee on September 11, and ask if you would like us to take
away from here a different impression than what I see in this
record. It is late in the day and you are being asked whether or not
there is any test that we could take to reduce the uncertainty,
because as you know, as you remember, the committee was dis-
turbed with the 50-50 chance that there was a fourth shot. And at
that point you had said, it is correct, there was a 50-50 chance that
there was a fourth shot. Congressman Edgar than asks you this
question: 'Ts there any test that we could make that could reduce
the uncertainty?” To which you replied: “Congressman, the answer
to that literally is yes. Now that the position of the motorcycle has
been fixed with some confidence, one would not bother with micro-
phones all over other parts of Dealey Plaza, for example.”
Then you said: “However, I believe that the advantages to be
gained from rectifying that problem are very marginal, and I doubt
if they could reasonably be expected to improve the level of uncer-
tainty in the test.”
Now it is of great importance to this committee that we distin-
guish between a 50-50 probability of a fourth shot and a 95-percent
certainty of the fourth shot. Could you clarify for me or harmonize
your testimony here today that you agree with the 95-percent
685
probability of the third shot with what you told us in September,
which was, in essence, that additional testing and whatever would
not increase the marginality of the probability?
Dr. Barger. Yes; first, that answer of mine sounds pretty good to
me, if I may tell you why. I perceived that I had been asked if
more shooting would be valuable. By that I mean, you know, we
were talking about a test and I thought that the question was
would more shooting be valuable and I said — I mean I intended to
say no to that. Because even though the uncertainty in the location
of the motorcycle had been greatly reduced by what we had done
then, there was still quite a bit.
When I said, “Literally yes,” I am glad I said that, because one
could always do exactly what Profesor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy
did. However, I had not conceived of that analytical extension of
what we had done at that time, and when Mr. Edgar asked me that
question I did not synthesize that procedure in my mind at that
time. However, shortly after discussing it with Professor Weiss, and
he did think up, I agree, readily that that was literally possible,
but I was not too enthusiastic, because the motorcycle might have
been over on near the curve, which would have put it 20 feet away
at the least, it could have been as much as almost 30 feet from that
microphone, and if he were to undertake his procedure, diligent as
he is, and was, and it had, in fact, have been 30 feet away, he
might still be looking.
Now it turns out it was only 5 feet away. I did not know that at
that time. And I did not want to say, oh sure, you know, go ahead
and try that, because the range of time it would take to succeed
could vary between a few days and a few months. However, I do
want to acknowledge very clearly that the particular extension of
my procedure that Professor Weiss used was his own idea and I
think a very good one, and as soon as I heard it I was very, very
quick to realize its potential value. But even then I did not know
how long it was going to take him to do it.
Mr. Fithian. Finally, this committee will soon have to decide
what we are going to do with this rather startling evidence, and I
am sure, given the nature of the world, that we will soon have our
critics, within weeks, if not days, and certainly within months and
years. Where will those critics be attacking this particular part of
our work, that is you, as our consultant, and our conclusions,
whatever they may be as a result of this testimony?
Dr, Barger. Well, that is a very good question, I sure would not
want to give anybody any ideas.
Mr. Fithian. Well, if I may just interject, I am just sure that the
startling nature of this information will prompt the most careful
scrutiny that has been yet applied to the Kennedy assassination.
Dr. Barger. Of course it will, and it should. It will take me a
little while to answer this question because I want to, you know, to
try to think of the most important items.
The reason I have to think is because— this long— is because up
till recently I felt that the major shortcoming of our work, and
when I say “our,” I mean Bolt, Beranek and Newman's and Queens
College and the committee staff s in particular, was that there was
no evidence that there was a motor vehicle where we had found it
to be. And I must say that would have been I thought a very
686
obvious place from which to attack the analysis. I feel now that
that particular issue is no longer at the top of my list.
I think the most serious problem, the most serious problem we
have as analysts is determining these probabilities.
There are two kinds of assumptions you can make w^hen you
compute the probabilities that we have computed. One is that each
event that occurs is statistically independent of all of the others,
and the other assumption is quite the opposite, that they are not
independent events, but they are all related. And if you make
either of those two assumptions, you can get an answer and it is
not always the same answer. And determining whether these
events, and by events I am talking about the occurrence of noise
spikes on the Dallas tape, in determining whether these are statis-
tically dependent, in other words, do they resemble each other here
and here and here or do they just come at random, is a question
that can be answered mathematically only if you have enough of
the data, and we do not have enough.
So, the hardest thing for us to do is to give accurate calcula-
tions — well, we can give accurate calculations, but we have to
make assumptions, and the assumption of statistical independence,
randomness in the noise, is an assumption that I have made when
I analyzed my own results, and also those of Professor Weiss and
Mr. Aschkenasy. People have been complaining that we did this. I
do not think they can improve on it, because there is not enough
data to answer the question. But literally, it is a problem.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Fithian. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Stokes. Gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Edgar.
Mr, Edgar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr, Barger, it may be redundant, but you were just talking about
the issue of probability. As I understand it, there were 2,592 sepa-
rate correlations made, that is, there were 432 test shots times six
segments of tape, is that correct? There were apparently 15 im-
pulses that reached a correlation coefficient of more than 0.5. Is
that correct?
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Edgar. Ten impulses, impulse matches of the Dallas Police
Department tape, and the reconstructed tape are asserted for shot
No. 3, is that not correct?
Dr. Barger. I think you are referring to Professor Weiss and Mr.
Aschkenasy, and in their analytical extension they achieved 10
matches. Is that what you are referring to?
Mr. Edgar. Yes, on shot No. 3.
Dr. Barger. Yes; in that, in their echo pattern which contained
12 echoes, they found that 10 of them matched with 10 of the 14
impulses that they observed in the Dallas tape.
Mr. Edgar. That was different from your 15?
Dr. Barger. Well, if we are — is what I said true? I mean, are you
referring to their analysis?
Mr. Edgar. I am referring to their 10 impulses that they found
on the Dallas police tape.
Dr. Barger. Yes. Well
Mr. Edgar [continuing]. Which matched up for the shot No. 3.
687
Dr. Barger. Yes; that is correct. Now, when I described our
correlations at the last testimony, we had different numbers than
that. The number 15 is not related to that issue. The number 15 is
the total number of correlation coefficients that exceeded the
threshold; the number 10 is the total number of impulses that
happen to match with echoes within one match, which, as I recall,
they calculated for that a correlation coefficient of 0.77.
Mr. Edgar. OK. We are at least agreed there are a lot of num-
bers floating around, and one of the numbers that are so difficult
to zero in on is how someone takes a look at all of that data and all
of those impulses and all of those shot patterns, and all of those
pieces of tape and all of those squiggly lines and say, aha, it is
clear to me that there is a 95-percent probability that this is a
third shot. And I guess I am just not clear, and I would hope you
could clarify for me what it is that you base that 95 percent on.
What is the calculation or formula that it is based upon?
Dr. Barger. All right. In the case of Professor Weiss and Mr.
Aschkenasy's match, which I suspect is the one you are referring
to, because the number 15 — well, I am not sure. Is that it?
Mr. Edgar. Let us just deal with the 95-percent probability.
Dr. Barger. On the third shot?
Mr. Edgar. That a third shot occurred from the grassy knoll.
That is all. Throw away all of the other things.
Dr. Barger. OK.
Mr. Edgar, And you just focus in on the 95 percent. You came
before us in September and said that possibility was 50-50. We
gave your data to Dr. Weiss and his team, and they came back and
said, now it is 95-percent chance. As I understand your testimony,
you are agreeing with their analysis, that it is now 95 percent?
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Edgar. Probable.
Dr. Barger. For the third.
Mr. Edgar. The question I am asking basically is for the third
shot, what is the bases, the calculation or formula upon which you
reached the 95-percent number?
Dr. Barger. OK. That question I understand and I will endeavor
to answer it.
I used the hypergeometric probability function to calculate the
probability that as many matches as he achieved could have oc-
curred by chance, and on any one try. Then I observed that in his
search for the correct location of the motorcycle that would be so
precise as to give him a plus or minus 1/1,000 of a second error on
each, he would have to look across the entire width of the street,
which was 40 feet, and 9 feet on either side of the microphone No.
4, where our test had indicated he was, the motorcycle was, closest
to at that time,
I made the judgment that when he moved his mathematical
point, and mathematically extended with his echo calculations
every 2 feet, he would get an independent pattern. In other words,
the echoes would slide out of the bins that they might otherwise
have been in, given that the bins were only twenty-one one-thou-
sandths of a second wide. Therefore, I determined that he had the
possibility of generating 180 independent patterns by his process.
And so I took the probability that he could have achieved a match
688
on one, times the number of independent bins he would in princi-
ple have had to search in order to cover the area of uncertainty,
and I got a value of 5.6 hundredths or approximately 5 percent,
and so my estimate in that way was, if a person sat down with a
bunch of noise spikes and was calculating new noise spikes by the
procedure he used, he could, about 5 times in 100, by chance, find a
match to that precision.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired,
Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman, I ask for 2 additional minutes.
Chairman Stokes. Without objection, the gentleman is recog-
nized 2 additional minutes.
Mr. Edgar. I think I understand a little bit better how you
perceived that probability, and I guess it begs the second question,
and that is the question of whether or not we should go back to
Dealey Plaza and put up 100 sniper's nests shooting at a specific
target and test out your probability of 95 percent, and if I under-
stand what you are saying right, we would only have less than a 5-
percent chance of duplicating the echo patterns that were found
emanating from the grassy knoll. Is that correct?
Dr. Barger. Well, if you shot from the wrong places, if you shot
from the right places, I would assume 95 times in 100 you would
get the same result.
Mr. Edgar. You are saying if we went back to the — if we went
back to the spot that Dr. Weiss says the shot took place
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr, Edgar [continuing]. And reenacted that shot today
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Edgar [continuing]. We have a 95-percent chance of getting
the same echo patterns?
Dr. Barger. Yes.
Mr. Edgar. You indicated that this process is a little bit like
fingerprinting, and the FBI and other law enforcement agencies
that use fingerprinting in the process have a statistically deter-
mined base that is based on millions of uses. You have, I think,
induced the analogy; it should not be further induced that you
have looked at many different physical locations similar to Dealey
Plaza and attempted to match up similar fingerprints. Is that
correct?
Dr. Barger. That is correct. In fact, what you are suggesting
would be called a statistical validation of the test, and one could
conduct this kind of test in other environments that were nominal-
ly similar and determine from a repeated set of those tests what
the probabilities, in fact, are, and that would be called a statistical
validation of the test, and that is a wonderful thing to do.
Mr. Edgar. One final comment, and then I will quit. You were
here this morning when I raised the question about the tempera-
tures and the degrees, and we talked at length with Dr. Weiss over
lunch about the value of looking at the temperature and the tem-
perature as a factor of determining the echo patterns, and the
validity of the data that was presented. I believe that that is one
area that could be explored further in the future by some other
body, taking a look at your tests in a careful and considered way.
Would you agree that temperature and validity factors of factors
like temperature and wind might be something that ought to be
689
looked at in evaluating the work you have done and the work Dr.
Weiss has done?
Dr. Barger. Yes; it is worth differentiating. The test that I did
was insensitive both to the uncertainties that we had in tempera-
ture and wind. Professor Weiss and Mr. Aschkenasy were getting
close to the point where uncertainties in temperature would cause
them to, you know, make an error. I do not believe they were there
yet, but they were getting close.
They were also getting close to the point where wind could have
been a problem. In other words, if the Mach number of the wind
had achieved a value of .05, wind projected along the line of sight
of the sound, then that could have become a problem for them. I
doubt very much if it did, because that would represent a projec-
tion along the line of sound of about a 40-mile-an-hour wind, and
the wind was not, I do not believe, blowing in that direction that
day, so it would have taken about an 80-mile-an-hour wind to have
a projection in the direction of the sound screen that would have
been significant. But in my test, where I have such a large accept-
ance window, you know, I was really insensitive to those things. I
believe they were getting close to where temperature and wind
have an effect. I do not believe that it was a detrimental effect.
Mr. Edgar. Thank you. I yield back my time.
Chairman Stokes. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Any other members of the committee seeking further recogni-
tion?
Dr. Barger, at the conclusion of a witness' testimony before our
committee, the witness is entitled to 5 minutes to either explain or
amplify or in any way further comment upon his testimony before
our committee. I would extend to you at this time 5 minutes for
that purpose.
Dr. Barger. Thank you. I found that this particular problem
that was brought to us by your committee was a most difficult
problem, and it was, it involved the activities of a good deal of
people at BBN who brought to this their own special expertise. I
could not have come close to knowing enough about all of these
meteorological, acoustical, radial, motorcycle, reflections, recording,
computing, everything that was reported in that report before, and,
therefore, I asked others to do it. And since I have the 5 minutes, I
would like to acknowledge the work of the colleagues on my re-
search team at our laboratory in Cambridge. And they are Dr.
Jared J. Wolf, Dr. Daniel N. Kalikow, Dr. Theodore L. Rhyne, Mr.
Scott Robinson, Mr. Leo A. Sledjeski, Ms. Nancy C. McMahon, Mr.
Joseph L. Coloruotolo, Mr. Edward C. Schmidt.
I would also like to acknowledge the moral support and the
financial support given to me by the division director. Dr. Frank
Jackson, and also the help given to me by Dr. Richard Bolt.
Finally, I would like to, I believe, it is important to acknowledge
that there is a fundamental principle of some importance that we
have been dealing with in this hearing. Professor Blakey conceived
the strategy to focus on the scientific evaluation of hard evidence
as opposed to recapitulation of eyewitness testimony. And your
committee implemented that strategy when it contracted with Bolt,
Beranek and Newman, and other research laboratories to conduct
these studies.
690
I believe that our findings demonstrate the wisdom of Professor
Blakey's strategy, and, furthermore, that they illustrate a poten-
tially useful way to apply scientific procedures in forensic proceed-
ings.
Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you very much, Dr. Barger, and I know
you spent a great deal of time on this project, and a great deal of
time with both the staff and committee, and we appreciate very
much your testimony here today.
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
FINAL COMMENTS BY PROF. G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF
COUNSEL AND STAFF DIRECTOR
Mr. Blakey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, it may be appropriate at this time to review for
the committee and those who are following our proceedings the
results of the committee’s various scientific projects, making an
effort to relate them to the acoustics results, and seeing what light,
taken together, they shed on the events in Dealey Plaza on Novem-
ber 22, 1963.
According to the acoustical analysis conducted by the committee,
four shots, over a total period of 7.91 seconds, were fired at the
Presidential limousine. The first, second and fourth came from the
depository; the third came from the grassy knoll. In evaluating the
acoustics project, it is relevant to ask to what degree its results are
consistent with data obtained in other scientific analyses. Similar-
ly, other scientific disciplines may be evaluated comparing them
with the acoustics results.
Following the Warren Commission’s analysis that found only
three shots, one of which missed, it had been generally assumed
that the final shot fired at President Kennedy was the one that is
vividly depicted at Zapruder frame 313, although the Commission
itself acknowledged that the last shot might have missed. Using
frame 312 — when the bullet would actually have struck the Presi-
dent — as the point of reference, it can be determined that the four
shots would have been heard by the limousine occupants at Za-
pruder frames 166, 196, 296, and 312.
A review of the Zapruder film indicates that a shot fired in the
vicinity of frame 166 did not strike any limousine occupants, so it
must have missed. The committee’s photographic panel, while
unable specifically to conclude that a shot was fired at this point,
noted that Governor Connally’s hand moved from left to right at a
rate of 540° per second during frames 162 through 164 and 166
through 167, followed by a more gradual shift of his torso to
the right. The panel concluded these movements may have been a
reaction to a severe external stimulus. The panel considered these
actions to be particularly significant because they were consistent
with the Governor’s Warren Commission testimony that he had
turned in response to having heard the first shot and was struck
almost immediately afterward. It is also consistent, of course, with
the Governor’s testimony before this committee and with the testi-
mony of eyewitnesses.
Some of those statements were incorporatred in the record this
morning. The relationship between the panel’s observations con-
691
cerning Governor Connally and the acoustics analysis is, however,
unclear, because Governor Connally appears to have initiated his
rapid body movement prior to frame 166, at the time when the
acoustics data suggest that the first shot would have been heard in
the limousine.
The relationship between the film and the recording is, however,
only approximate. It reflects the adjusted real-time characteristics
of the recording and the average running time of the film — 18.3
frames per second. It was possible to determine the real-time char-
acteristics of the recording because of the knowledge that the re-
corder was powered by a 60-cycle-per-second electrical current.
Since prints of this 60-cycle-per-second current actually appear on
the tape, the corrected running time can be determined by compar-
ing these prints with a clocking of the running of the tape.
The 18.3-frame-per-second average rate of the Zapruder film was,
on the other hand, determined by the FBI under laboratory condi-
tions in which the camera was set and run in the manner that
Zapruder described he had used it at the time of the assassination.
In relating this film to the acoustics results, it is important to
understand that given the 18.3-frame-per-second average running
speed of the film, a differential, for example, of only six frames is
actually a differential of less than a third of a second.
For this reason, absolute correlation between the acoustics re-
cording and the film should not be expected. What is significant is
that there is an approximate correlation in rough time between the
events on the film and the tape. Each, therefore, corroborates or
substantiates the other.
The photographic panel's observations were also relevant to
acoustics data that indicated the second shot both impacted and
was heard by the limousine occupants at Zapruder frame 196.
Specifically, the panel noted that at Zapruder frame 192 the Presi-
dent's movements suddenly froze, as his right hand seemed to stop
abruptly in the midst of a waving motion. Then during frames 200
to 202 his head moved rapidly to the left. The sudden interruption
of the President's hand-waving motion, coupled with his rapid head
movements, was considered by the photographic panel as evidence
of President Kennedy's reaction to some '‘severe external stimu-
lus."
Finally, the panel observed that Governor Connally's actions at
frame 224, as he is seen emerging from behind the sign that
obstructed Mr. Zapruder's view, indicated he was also reacting to
some "severe external stimulus." Based upon this observation and
upon the positions of President Kennedy and Governor Connally
within the limousine, the panel concluded that the relative aline-
ment of the two men was consistent with the theory that they had
just been struck by the same bullet.
The committee's forensic pathology panel based its examination
on duly authenticated Kennedy autopsy materials and its personal
examination of Governor Connally. It concluded that the first
bullet to hit President Kennedy entered his back at approximately
5 centimeters below the shoulder and three centimeters to the
right of the midline of the back, and it exited by the front of his
neck near the third tracheal cartilage.
692
The forensic pathological panel, with one member in dissent,
stated that the medical evidence was consistent with the hypoth-
esis that this same bullet proceeded to inflict Governor Connally's
torso, wrist, and thigh wounds.
A trajectory analysis by the committee was based on the location
of the limousine at Zapruder frame 197, the positions of President
Kennedy and Governor Connally at that point, and the bullet's
course as it could be determined from their wounds. When Presi-
dent Kennedy’s entry and exit wounds were used as reference
points for the trajectory line, it intersected the Texas School Book
Depository within a 13-foot radius of a point approximately 14 feet
west of the building's southeast corner and almost level with the
sills of the sixth floor windows.
When President Kennedy's exit wound and Governor Connally's
entrance wound were used as the reference points for the trajec-
tory line, it intersected the Texas School Book Depository within a
7-foot radius of a point approximately 4 feet west of the southeast
corner and 12 feet above the sixth floor windowsills.
Neutron activation analysis performed by the committee on
bullet fragments that had been removed from Governor Connally's
wrist indicated a high probability that they were from a bullet that
had been recovered from a stretcher at Parkland Hospital.
Committee ballistics tests also indicated that this bullet had been
fired from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, which had been
found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. In
addition, ballistics tests established that three cartridges found on
the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository had been fired
in Oswald's rifle.
In contrast with evidence thus available for evaluating the acous-
tics data with respect to the first two shots, there is no other
scientific evidence for a shot that would have been heard by the
limousine occupants at Zapruder frame 296, that is, no scientific
evidence other than the acoustics.
There is also no indication on the Zapruder film that a shot
struck any of the limousine occupants at this point.
As for the shot that struck the President at Zapruder frame 312,
there is again scientific evidence that may be used to evaluate the
acoustics results.
With one panel member dissenting, the forensic pathological
panel's view of the autopsy materials established that only one
bullet, fired from behind, struck President Kennedy's head, enter-
ing near the cowlick portion of his hair part and exiting near the
top front area of the right side of his skull. When these wound
locations were used as the reference points for a trajectory analy-
sis, given the President's body orientation and the location of the
limousine at Zapruder frame 312, the trajectory intersected the
TSBD within a 23-foot radius of a point 16 feet west of the south-
east corner of the building approximately 15 feet above the sixth
floor windowsills.
In addition, neutron activation analysis indicted a high probabil-
ity that bullet fragments found on the limousine floor came from
the same bullet as fragments that had been removed from Presi-
dent Kennedy's brain. According to neutron activation analysis,
these fragments did not match the bullet found on the stretcher at
693
Parkland Hospital, indicating that two bullets struck either the
limousine or its occupants.
Finally, ballistics tests confirmed that bullet fragments found in
the limousine had been fired by Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano.
Neutron activation and ballistics evidence do not indicate that a
third bullet struck the limousine or its occupants.
This summary of the scientific evidence is, of course, based upon
the proposition that the fourth and final shot fired at the limousine
struck President Kennedy at Zapruder frame 312. If Zapruder
frame 312 actually reflects the time of the third shot rather than
the fourth, the timing of the first, second and fourth shots would
then correspond respectively with Zapruder frames 182, 212, and
327.
The possibility that the fourth shot occurred at Zapruder frame
327 would require a finding, in light of the neutron activation
analysis, the ballistics test and the medical testimony, that both
the third and the fourth shots hit President Kennedy in the head.
Taken together, both the neutron activation analysis and the
ballistics test performed by the committee indicate that only two
shots fired by Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano struck the limousine
and its occupants.
The findings of the forensic pathological panel and the results of
the trajectory analysis establish that these two shots were fired
from behind the Presidential limousine. While the evidence seem-
ingly points to the fourth shot as the head shot, a possibility that
the third shot may have hit President Kennedy in the head must
nevertheless be closely examined.
After the acoustical data had been reviewed, the committee de-
cided to synchronize the sounds recorded in the reconstruction in
Dealey Plaza in August 1978, with the best copy of the Zapruder
film available, one in the possession of the Secret Service.
With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like now to show
to the committee each of two versions of that synchronization.
Will you hold the lights for a minute?
The second version synchronizes shot four from the Depository
with Zapruder frame 312. The committee can determine for itself
which version is visually more appropriate.
Let me refocus everyone’s attention.
As the committee will recall, there has been considerable contro-
versy over the source of the shot that hit the President’s head.
While it has been suggested that it came from the grassy knoll,
medical testimony taken by the committee last September indicat-
ed the President was struck twice from behind and that no shots
hit from the front. One member of the medical panel did insist,
however, that it was possible for a shot to have come from the
right front. These two alternatives are depicted by these two ver-
sions of the Zapruder film synchronized with the firing test record-
ing.
In viewing each version, the committee should look for, in se-
quence, two things: First, the committee should watch Governor
Connally to see if he turns in response to the first shot. When
Governor Connally testified before the committee in September he
said he did, in fact, hear the first shot, turn his head to look, and
was then hit by the second shot.
35-37') O - - 44
694
Second, the committee should try to detect the point at which
President Kennedy and Governor Connally are hit by the second
bullet and determine if the reactions of each man are visually
appropriate in each film or whether one version — the first or the
second — seems to be visually more appropriate.
Let me repeat, this is not a sound film of the actual assassina-
tion. The sound that has been dubbed onto the Zapruder film is the
sound that was recorded in August as part of Dr. Barger's record-
ing in Dealey Plaza.
In the first version of the film, the hit to President Kennedy's
head is keyed to the shot from the grassy knoll.
Let me repeat, in the first version of the film, the hit to Presi-
dent Kennedy's head is keyed to the shot from the grassy knoll. In
the second version of the film, the second one you will see, the hit
to the head is keyed to the shot from the Texas School Book
Depository.
Mr. Chairman, before this film is shown — and I might say the
staff considered and discussed with the committee at some length
as to whether this film should be shown — I would remind the
committee as well as those who are following these proceedings on
television or are present in this room that certain segments of this
film may be offensive to people of special sensitivity. They are, in
fact, offensive to me. Those who might fit in this category might
wish not to watch this film.
I would also like to indicate that the film was put together by
Robert Groden, a consultant to the committee, and his help is
gratefully acknowledged.
Could I have the lights off, please.
[Film presentation.]
Mr. Blakey. May I have the light please?
Mr. Chairman, may we have the film just shown entered as JFK
F-666?
Chairman Stokes, Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, in light of the refined acoustics
evidence, the committee obviously has weighed the possible impli-
cations of a fourth shot fired from the grassy knoll. It goes without
saying that this shot would be of particular significance if it could
be determined that it inflicted wounds to President Kennedy and
contributed to, or actually caused, his death.
The committee has available to it this afternoon, for the purpose
of lending an expert opinion to this endeavor, the moderator of its
forensic pathological panel, Dr. Michael Baden, the Chief Medical
Examiner of New York. In light of the time factor, however, I will
summarize what his testimony would have been.
Dr. Baden reexamined the materials in light of the additional
information given to him by the acoustics panel. He went back to
the original film, to the original X-rays and to the other materials.
His conclusion remains as it was: There is no medical evidence that
President Kennedy was hit from the front and to the right. There
is no medical evidence to indicate that he was not shot at from the
front and to the right. The forensic pathological panel simply says
that if he was shot at from the front and to the right, the shot
missed.
695
The medical testimony apparently indicated that if the third shot
occurred, it did not hit President Kennedy. There is no evidence
that anyone else in Dealey Plaza was struck by a bullet from
behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll.
Testimony already presented to the committee indicates that one
or more persons reported seeing bullets hit in or around the Presi-
dential limousine.
In an effort to complete its investigation of where the third shot,
assuming it occurred, might have hit, the committee turned to the
Presidential limousine itself, which is now in the possession of the
Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich.
The committee contacted Major Louis Smith of the Michigan
State Police and requested that an experienced crime-scene team
examine the car to determine if there is any evidence that it was
struck by a bullet fired from the picket fence on the grassy knoll.
Major Smith expressed a belief that such an examination would
prove futile, since extensive refurbishing and rebuilding had been
performed on the limousine since the assassination. He did, none-
theless, make his men available to the committee, and an examina-
tion was conducted in the past week.
The examination was conducted by laboratory specialist James
Bergen and laboratory specialist Michael Arrowood. The committee
expresses its appreciation to them for their effort.
Major Smith reports that there is no evidence that a bullet from
the grassy knoll struck the Presidential limousine.
To look further at the question of the direction from which the
wound-inflicting bullets came, the committee had available to it —
again, this afternoon — its engineering analysis and consultant for
the head-shot trajectory. The purpose of Mr. Canning^s testimony
was to determine if any conclusions of the committee's expert
consultant might have been changed by the refinement of the
acoustical data. He would have addressed this afternoon the ques-
tion, Could the fourth shot have occurred at Zapruder frame 327
and have come, as it must have in light of the other evidence, from
the depository? His conclusion, based on rough figures, is that it is
highly unlikely that a bullet fired from the depository could have
struck the President as number four at frame 327.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes the presentation of the staff to the
committee.
At this point I wonder, though, if I might be permitted to make
an observation?
Chairman Stokes. The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my apprecia-
tion, as I have not in a personal way previously, to the committee,
on the public record, for the support that it has given this staff in
pursuing its investigation.
May I be blunt and say that not every congressional committee
acts without politics. This one did. This staff appreciates being free
from that particular affliction.
In addition, let me say that it is not true of every investigation
that it goes the last mile. As you may be aware, I went to Notre
Dame where I at least learned one thing. Put in terms of football
analogy, it would go something like this: When you are ahead,
don't let up, and when you are behind, don't give up. Translated
696
into this investigation, it means that we should have made every
effort we could as long as we could.
I want to thank you, particularly and personally, for extending
to this committee staff the opportunity to continue to pursue this
investigation for the last yard.
As you know, and as I am sure some other people here present
know, the staff has over the last several weeks begun going on
vacations, well deserved, and to other jobs. Nevertheless, I hope
history writes that this staff worked until the last possible minute.
Last, I would like to say what I have not said publicly to the staff
as a whole, both those who are here now and those who may be
watching this on the outside, that I deeply appreciate the profes-
sionalism that you showed, and the hard work, far in excess of
what I had any reason to expect, that you gave me. Thank you.
Chairman Stokes. Thank you, Professor Blakey. I am sure that
our entire committee would concur with me that you have done an
outstanding job as the director of the staff and as chief counsel for
this committee. You have done it with the highest form of profes-
sionalism, and we are indebted to you for that.
Additionally, we are very proud of the type of a staff that you
did assemble — very bright young people, who served this country so
well and in such a dedicated way.
I might acknowledge also that deputy chief counsel Ken Klein
and our senior staff counsel, Michael Goldsmith, were prepared to
examine fully the two other witnesses whom we are not going to
call on in light of time constraints.
At this time I would like to announce the committee will meet in
executive session immediately after we have adjourned the full
session of this committee, and I have some closing remarks.
If anyone wants to be recognized before I give those remarks
Mr. Dodd. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to raise a question that I
would have asked of a couple of the witnesses coming, and possibly
for the purpose of the record I could direct them to Mr. Blakey, to
see if we can’t shed some light on them at this point. One has to do
with the question, in light of the implications of the acoustical
evidence, with regard to a fragment found, a bullet fragment found
in the limousine that for some time has not been easily identifiable
as a result of neutron activation tests.
I wonder, Mr. Blakey, if you might just comment on that. There
has been some question raised about that particular fragment and
I wonder if there are others as well, or just that one that raised
that question?
Mr. Blakey. I am not really prepared to respond to that, Mr.
Dodd, and I probably have done in this record what I should not
have on several occasions, and that is, speak from memory.
I think perhaps I will have to discuss that with you later, when I
can get a briefing on the details of that and not misstate, or
misstate myself.
Mr. Dodd. In light of that, I won’t ask the other ones then. I
don’t want to rely on people’s memories, I will reserve the ques-
tions until afterward, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman
Chairman Stokes. Mr. Edgar?
697
Mr. Edgar. I just wanted to say, on behalf of this member, and I
think I speak for the others, how deeply indebted we are to you for
taking up the chairmanship of this particular committee over the
last year and a half and providing the leadership that this commit-
tee so desperately needed. You came on at a tough time, and I
think you deserve our deep gratitude for your efforts as chairman.
I just want to say thank you.
CLOSING REMARKS BY CHAIRMAN LOUIS STOKES
Chairman Stokes. Thank you very much. It has been for me a
great experience.
I guess one of the things I am most proud of is that in the 10
years I have been in the Congress I have never seen a congression-
al committee work as harmoniously, in such a nonpartisan way, as
this committee has, and it has been a real honor to have chaired
this committee.
I am very proud of the type of support I have gotten from the
ranking minority member, Mr. Sam Devine of Ohio, who has been
staunch in his support of this committee in every respect and has
been tireless in his efforts on behalf of this committee, along with
the other members of the minority side; and, of course, our two
distinguished subcommittee chairmen, Judge Richardson Preyer,
who chaired the Kennedy investigation, and Congressman Faun-
troy, who chaired the King investigation, and both of whom worked
tirelessly, many, many hours in executive session and in the full
sessions, and all of you gentlemen — Mr. Dodd, Mr. Edgar, Mr.
Fithian — who I know attended those executive sessions and worked
long hours while you tried to do your other congressional work,
many times at a very personal sacrifice — I think the country is
indebted to all of you. Thank you.
[Additional material included at the request of Congressman
Richardson Preyer:]
698
Law orricES
Ralph W. Yarborough
721 BROWN BUILDING, COLORADO AT W. EIGHTH
AUSTIN. TEXAS 78701
fil2 478-2873
December 27, 1978
Congressman Richardson Preyer
Chairman
House Subconmittee on Assassination
of John F. Kennedy
2344 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Subject: Investigation of the assass-
ination of John F. Kennedy
Dear Chairman Preyer:
At the time of the assassination of President John F«
Kennedy, I was serving as United States Senator from Texas,
and was riding in the car with then Vice President and Mrs*
Lyndon Johnson in the Dallas Presidential Motorcade.
Having used firearms since I was a small boy, and hav-
ing qualified, while serving on the staff of the 97th
Infantry Division in World War II, with rifle, carbine,
pistol and bazooka, and having hunted since with rifles and
shotguns, I have some familiarity with the noise made by
the firihg of such weapons*
In the Motorcade in Dallas, the first explosion was so
distinct in its nature, that my mental processes immediately
registered '*rifle shot*’ - it was an immediate mental reac-
tion without conscious thought process on my part.
On many occasions since, I have stated that there were
definitely three explosions, or shots (this while the F.B.I.
was expounding its two shot theory) , but during all of
these years I have been troubled by the fact that the two
subsequent explosions did not sound like that first clear
sound of indisputable rifle fire, clear as a signal. I
assumed that the difference might have been caused by the
699
changed position of the car, or other movement.
The recent revelations of a possible fourth shot
possibly clear up that doubt as to the reason for the
difference in sound between the different explosions.
When I read of the scientific experiment through
firing weapons at different positions in the parade route
at Dallas , I attempted to telephone the Chairman of the
Full Committee, the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, the
Chief Counsel or Deputy Chief Counsel of the Assassinations
Committee and Sub-Committee, but could reach none of you,
but was relegated to someone so far down the line that they
did not seem to understand my recommendation at that time.
I have been on hunting trips a number of times when
two hunters, neither knowing that the other hunter was fir-
ing, fire simultaneously at game, each thinking that they
had killed it, each hearing only one explosion. With those
experiences in mind, what I recommended to some one of the
Committee staff (whom I took from our telephone conversa-
tion to know nothing about gunfire) was that firing from
the Text Book Depository window and the grassy knoll be
synchronized and be made simultaneously, with proper sen-
sitive listening devices at all proper points, in an effort
to see if science, so applied, would throw any light on
the doubts which increase with the years, as to the accu-
racy of the Warren Commission Report, recommendation
may never have gotten past the person on your staff to
whom it was given, as that person seemed not to understand
it.
After the first shot was fired, the Motorcade seemed
to momentarily slow down; the resulting close proximity of
the principal cars being shown on a photograph which I
mailed to the Warren Commission (that Commission having
declined to call me as a witness) , taken from the Saturday
Evening Post, a cropped version of which was printed in
the Warren Commission report with my letter of transmittal
to that Consnission.
The Warren Commission report stated that the Motorcade
speeded up, and took off, but it did not say when. The
700
Motorcade did not speed up and take off until all the three
explosions had occurred ,
In the interest of history, I request that this letter
be printed with your report.
If your sub-conmittee will put aside preconceived
ideas, if any, from reading the Warren Comnission Report
(which I do not charge you have) , but pursue truth wherever
it leads, you will render a service to history, and build
a higher confidence among your countrymen for the integrity
of public institutions.
Respectfully yours.
Chairman Stokes. I would like at this time to make some addi-
tional closing remarks:
This concludes the public hearings of the Select Committee on
Assassinations. As I previously noted, the committee will meet in
executive session this evening, to discuss and vote on its ultimate
findings and recommendations, which will be submitted on Janu-
ary 3, 1979, to the Clerk of the House. It will also be made public
at that time.
The final report of the committee is now being edited for security
declassification, and publication. The final report, a transcript of
our public hearings and various appendices will be sent to the
Government Printing Office by March 30. They will also be made
public at that time.
As January 3 is the termination date of the select committee, all
work on the editing of the report, the public hearings and other
documents will be done under the auspices of the Clerk of the
House.
It seems appropriate now, therefore, to reflect on some of the
implications of what this committee has done.
The committee has presented evidence clearly pointing to the
identity of the assassins in both cases.
The committee has developed evidence of the outlines of a likely
conspiracy in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and
if it is accepted, the evidence heard by the committee today could
point to a conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy,
The committee has also carefully assessed the performance of the
various Federal agencies and looked into each of the assassinations.
The committee has also looked at what recommendations should
be made for the future.
The question, nonetheless, arises: What course of action should
our society now take with the work of the select committee having
come to an end?
701
As I have said repeatedly, this committee is not a judicial body.
In its legislative hearings the committee has looked to the past in a
search for facts that might enable it to make recommendations for
the future. I emphasize what not all have realized: The committee
did not set out to prove or disprove any theory; it did not set out to
prove or disprove the existence of a conspiracy in either investiga-
tion.
Throughout the investigations of both assassinations, the com-
mittee addressed four questions:
Who was or were the assassin or assassins? Was there a conspir-
acy? How well did the Federal agencies perform their protective
and investigative duties? And what, if any, recommendations
should the committee make for the future?
Our legislative work is now done. For the committee to proceed
to investigate the issue of individual responsibility in either assassi-
nation would be unnecessary and inappropriate, unnecessary be-
cause the committee has learned what it needs to know to recom-
mend legislative and administrative reform, inappropriate because
fact-finding for the purposes of making recommendations, not an
assessment of individual responsibility, is and has been the com-
mittee’s only mandate.
The assessment of personal guilt is something that the Constitu-
tion has rightfully allocated to the Executive branch to investigate
and for the judicial process to weigh.
Now I recognize, of course, that there are still loose ends in both
of these investigations that I had hoped our work might have tied
down. I regret that these matters are still outstanding.
As I have observed before, life itself has loose ends. It may well
be that those who continue the investigations also will not be able
to resolve all of the troubling issues that this committee has ex-
posed. It has been, after all, many years since these assassinations
occurred. I wish them well and hope that they will assess our work
and make use of it, just as this committee has assessed and made
use of the results of the investigations that preceded it.
We have not been perfect, but we have tried to be conscientious
and candid in our work. If history records we at least did that, I
then will be satisfied.
There is at least one lesson that our society ought to draw from
this committee’s work, and I would like to leave that with you this
afternoon: Never again should our society respond as it did in the
aftermath of the deaths of these two great patriots. We did not give
these men the type of investigations in death which were commen-
surate with the dignity of their lives. We cannot, of course, rewrite
history. We cannot bring back President John F. Kennedy or Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. The past can be a die for the future. We
can and we must promise ourselves that this history will never be
again repeated in this Nation.
I thank you.
If there is nothing further at this time, the committee is ad-
journed.
[Whereupon, at 5:03 p.m., the hearing was concluded.]
702
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED BY MR. ROBERT GRODEN
The following letter, with accompanying photographs and cap-
tions, was received by the committee from Robert Groden after the
termination of the public hearings, and after the committee had
voted upon its findings and recommendations. Therefore the com-
mittee was not able to evaluate, and did not rely upon, the letter or
its attachments, in reaching any conclusion in connection with its
investigation. The materials, however, are set forth here for the
benefit of those who may continue to study these subjects. The
captions are those of Mr. Groden, and not the committee.
703
Robert J, Groden
385 Florida Grove Road
Hopelawni N.J. O8861
Rep. Louis Stokes. Chairman
House Select Committee on Assassinations
Washington. D.C. 20515
Dear Chairman Stokes 1
As Photographic Consultant to the Committee. I've been
exposed to a question of central importance relating to the
results of the acoustics tests that I feel I can shed some light
upon.
The question is 'was the open transmitter button that
received the sounds of the gunshots, in the plaza' .
Professors Weiss and Aschkenasy have proven scientificedly
that the 'stuck mike' was in Dealey Plaza and further, that
the motorcycle with the open microphone was 120 feet behind
the President's car at the moment of the impact on the
President's head.
I am enclosing several photographic exhibits which are
the best evidence to corroborate the analysis by the
acoustics panel.
The motorcycle seen in the enclosed photographs is
Officer H. B. McLain's. This determination was made by the
House Committee and was confirmed by McLain himself in
his public testimony in December, 1978.
Officer McLain was riding on the left side of the motor-
cade at the level of the convertible press cars. This is
where the police tape analysis places the open microphone.
Robert J. Groden
Photographic Consultant,
House Select Committee on Assassinations
704
In connection with Groden exhibit No. 1 above, which portrays a
motorcycle riding on the left side of the motorcade as it approaches
Dealey Plaza from Main Street, the committee secured, through
the cooperation of the Dallas Police Department, a copy of the
daily solo motorcycle assignment log sheet for the week of Novem-
ber 22, 1963.
The log sheet reflects that during that week officer McLain was
assigned to ride motorcycle No. 352, as Mr. Groden states his
exhibit No. 1 reflects.
Groden Exhibit # 1
A frame from the Dallas Cinema Associate.s film showing the Presidential raotx)r-
cade on Main St. a few’ block.s before Dealey Plaza which is the open area in the
background. In the foreground is officer H. B. McLain riding his motorcycle,
# 352 .
705
Groden Exhibit # 2
With the motorcade on Houston St. ami the President at the corner of Houston
and Elm, Officer McLain is now in the foreground making the turn from Main
to Houston and starting to speed up to the corner of Elm, (From the Robert
Hughes film).
706
Groden Exhibit # 3-1 A
A film taken from the fourth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building
by Mrs. Elsie Dorman shows the President’s car beginning the turn onto Elm St.
from Houston St.
707
Gboden Exhibit # 3-lB
Mrs, Dorman pans the crowd as they watch the President pass directly in front
of them and in front of the T.S.B.D.
708
Grodex Exhibit # 3-lC
The crowd looks down Elm St, following the President with their eyes.
709
Grodex Exhibit # 3-lD
As Mrs. Dorman pans back, she catches the tail end of tlie Vice-Presidential car
(lower right corner).
35-379 0 - 79-45
710
Groden Exhibit # 3-lE
Right behind the Vice President’s car is its follow-up car
711
Groden Exhibit # 3-2A
Then Mayor CabelVs car appears l)eneath a light pole in front of the depository
building.
This sequence is shot non-stop from this point on and acts as a clock. From this
point until the point when Officer McLain reaches the Elm Street comer we have
an accurate clock of six seconds. According to the account of the events on the
Dallas police tape given by Professors Weiss and Aschkenasy, both Dallas Mayor
CabelLs car and Officer McLain’s motorcycle should have been exactly where
these scenes from the Dorman film show them to be.
712
Groden Exhibit # 3-2B
Panning the crowd to the Elm-Hoiiston corner.
713
Groden Exhibit # 3-2C
At tbe Elm-Hoiistoii corner.
714
Gboden Exhibit # ^2D
Panning up a few feet on Houston toward Main but still at the Elm St corner.
715
Groden Exhibit # 3-2E
Officer McLain appears at the top of the picture as the shooting begins just around
the corner on Elm St.
Officer McLain at the Elm-Hoiist(
he’s leaning his hike into the turn,
street at the apex of the corner.
717
Groden Exhibit # 3-2G
Ulow-ui) and detail from the Dorman t<mm original showing Offiwr H. B. McLai^.
Otftwr Mel,ain is riding parallel to one of the press convertibles. He was the
mdy Xer riding on the left side of the motorcade anywhere near his iKis.tiom
This .setiuence of film is the best evidence that McLain was indeed in position
to be the otticer with the open microphone.
718
Groden Exhibit # S-2H
Officer McLain actually in the Elm-Hoiiston turn between the time of the first
shots and the time of the last shots. He is looking down Elm Street at this point.
719
Film by Jack Daniel shows Elm St. in Dealey Plaza in the background and the
President’s car racing toward the camera. The only visible motorcycle policeman
on Elm St. is B. J. Martin. Tlie other flanking cycles all stopped farther back up
Elm. Officer McLain at this point was coasting down from the head of Elm St.
and is too far back to appear in the sequence. This is consistent with the flndings
of the acoustics panel which found that the motorcycle with the depressed micro-
phone transmitter button had waited approximately a half minute before accel-
erating to leave the plaza.
720
Groden Exhibit # o
A frame from the film taken by Mark Bell shows a Motorcycle Officer (in all
probability McLain) coasting down Elm St. This frame was exi>osed at least
28 seconds after the moment of the explosion of the President’s head. The
timing cannot be set any finer because Mr, Bell had to stop to rewind his camera.
I have allowed 10 seconds to permit the rewinding of the camera. The police
tape reveals that the motorcycle did not accelerate until a half minute after the
last shot was fired. If Mr. Bell took approximately ten .seconds to rewind the
film, then this is JIcLain and this is yet additional proof that the police tape
recording resulted from his microphone being oi)cn in Dealey Plaza. However,
even if this is not JIcT^ain, the other exhibits provided are strong proof of the
fact that it indeed was his microphone that picked up the sound of the shots.
S^rgyan t < ^ //»\
_ln charc«
722
Finally, the following memorandum describes the process of cor-
relating the acoustics analysis with the Zapruder film:
MEMORANDUM
TO: All Select Committee Members
FROM:
G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Di recto
DATE: February 22, 1979
RE: Fine Points of Correlation of Tape to Film
As noted during the course of our public hearings, any attempt
to derive the maximum knowledge from the available acoustical and
photographic evidence requires that at least an approximate correla-
tion be made between the timing of the shots as recorded on the
Dallas Police Department tape and the visual record contained In the
Zapruder film. One such correlation was presented during the hear-
ings in the form of a copy of the Zapruder film with four shots dub-
bed onto it at the approximate times that the occupants of the
limousine would have heard the sounds of the gun fire. In fact, two
different versions of the film were shown on December 29th. In the
first, the sound of the fourth shot (from the TSBD) conicided with
the fatal head wound seen at Zapruder frame 313, and in the second,
the third (grassy knoll shot) coincided with that wound.
Under the time constraints of preparing for the hearings on
December 29th and with the recognition that neither the running
speed of the DPD dictabelt nor of Zapruder's camera was known with
absolute precision, the frames used on December 29th for such
correlation purposes were based only on the actual spacing of shots
on the DPD tape (totaling 7.9 seconds from the first to the last) and
the "average" running speed of Zapruder's camera, which the FBI
determined in 1964 to be 18.3 frames per second.
Nevertheless, so that the Committee's final report may be more
exact and that you can understand the basis for the increased pre-
cision we have continued to refine our data and it may be helpful to
note in this memorandum the results of our efforts to be more precise
as well as what is set forth in the final reports of BB&N, Weiss and
Aschkenasy, and what was contained in a letter from FBI Director
Hoover to the Warren Commission of February 3, 1964.
In its final report, BB&N advises the Committee that its best
estimate is that the DPD dictabelt was recording approximately 5%
too slowly on November 22, 1963, a fact also noted in the hearing
on the 29th. The FBI's letter of February 3, 1964, also stated as
quoted in full below:
At the request of members of your staff the FBI
Laboratory has made a further study of the film speed
of the camera used by Mr. Abraham Zapruder in filming the
eight millimeter motion picture of the President's
assassination. You have previously been furnished the
results of the Laboratory examination of this camera
which places the film speed at 18 1/3 frames per second.
The Laboratory was requested to establish, if possible,
the variation between the film speed of the camera
when the drive spring is fully wound and when the sprino
is almost run down.
This study has been made by checking the film
speed of the Zapruder camera at ten second intervals
throughout the full running time of a fully wound camera.
Several checks were made on a full roll of film and it
was found that the film speed of the camera when fully
wound runs at an average speed of from 18.0 to 18.1 frames
723
2 - correlation of tape to film
per second (fps) for the first ten seconds. It gradually
increases to 18.3 to 18.5 fps for the next twenty seconds,
then gradually decreases slightly to 18.1 fps for ten
seconds before the final twenty seconds that run at an
average speed of 17.6 to 17.9 frames per second, Mr.
Zapruder has stated that the camera was fully wound when
he started filming the President's motorcade. Since all
of Mr. Zapruder's assassination film was exposed well
within the first half of time the camera will run on one
winding, the rundown film speed should not be considered
in the calculations. Therefore, the above figures result
in our previous average frames per second speed for the
assassination film of 18 1/3 or 18,3 frames per second.
Shots 1,2 and 4 were found by BB&N to begin on the DPD tape
at 137.70, 139.27 and -145.61 seconds, respectively. Shot number
three was found by Weiss and Aschkenasy to begin at 144.90 seconds.
If the spacing between those shots is adjusted by the approximate
5X error in running speed of the dictabelt, the probable true
timing of the shots, beginning with shot number one as zero, is
0.0, 1.65, 7.6 and 8.3 seconds.
Using those best estimates of the true timing of the shots,
it is possible to calculate the frame number on Zapruder's film at
which any event of interest occurred, and to do so for any assumed
running speed of the camera. Nevertheless, it would not be accurate
to simply multiply the corrected time spacing of the sounds as re-
corded, by the assumed number of frames per second running speed,
unless, of course, you wanted to know only what frame was being
exposed when the microphone picked up the sound of each shot.
If, for example, what you wished to know was which frame of
the film was exposed when the bullet struck (or passed by) the
limousine on the first shot, and you assumed the camera was running
at 18.5 frames per second, and that the fatal head wound was caused
by the fourth (TSBD) shot, your calculations would proceed as
follows:
1, The distance from the motorcycle to the TSBD at the time
of the first shot was approximately 124 feet.
2, Since sound traveled at approximately 1123 fps on 11/22/63
In Dealey Plaza (it being about 65° in the Plaza at that
time), the sound took about .11 second to reach the micro-
phone after the muzzle blast occurred. Stated conversely,
the trigger was pulled .11 second before the 0.0 point
in time on the tape.
3. If the fatal head shot is observable at frame 313, we can
assume the bullet struck one frame earlier, at 312. A
Mannl icher-Carcano bullet travels at approximately 2000 fps.
Since the limousine was approximately 265 feet from the
TSBD window at frame 312,
seconds before frame 312.
was only about 145 feet fr
Consequently, dividing 145 by 1123, it is apparent that
the microphone recorded that sound .13 seconds after the
trigger pull, or at about the same time that the bullet
impacted,
4. It is now possible to determine the frame at which the
trigger pull on shot number one occurred. You simply take
the total corrected tape time (8.3 seconds), add the
the trigger was pulled .13
(l-S^ = .13) The motorcycle
oS^tHe TSBD at this time.
724
3 - correlation of tape to film
.11 second delay from shot number one trigger pull to
recording time (step numer 2)» multiply by 18,5 frames
per second (8.41 x 18.5 = 155.6), and substract from
312. The trigger was first pulled at frame 156.
5. Finally, by allowing for bullet travel time to the limou-
sine (about 143 feet), it can be determined that the bullet
struck at about frame 1 57 (1 56 + ( x 18,5) - 157).
Similar calculations can be made for other events of interest.
One example is the question of what frame was being exposed v/hen
Zapruder heard each shot. This information, of course, is useful^
for comparison with the blur analysis conducted by the photographic
panel .
The following is a chart setting forth the results of such calcu
lations, using three different estimates of camera speed, 18.0,
18.3, and 18.5 frames per seconds:
Shot
No.
Tape
T ime
Trigger
Pull
Time
Hearing Shock
Wave in L i mo ,
Heari ng Huzzl e j
Blast by Zapruder^
Weapon
to
Limo.^
Motorcycl e
to
Wea pon ^
1
0.11
0
i
161 177
165
181
"oTOT
TbT 1 75
0.24
162 1
178
1 143' ! 124 '
1T7TTT3
160i
T77
1 I '
2
1.76
1 .66
I
191 -208
1 94
210
189 .206
1.90
1^
209
165'
188 .205
191
208
3
7.69
7.49
i
296 ’ 31 2
296
312
1
7.55
296 312
7.55;
2961
312
nr ! 220 '
T9nT2
1
T9~6l
312
•
4
8.44
8.31 '
312 i328
1
1
31 ^
330
I
f
3
312 328
8.551
1 314i330
i 266"^
i i
312 ;329
!
1 314T33D
’ .
i-Sound: 1123 fps ^Zapruder to TSBD: 270'
2Bul1et: 2000 fps Zapruder to Knoll: 60'
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